CHAPTER VII
The days glided by very pleasantly to the little company at Crag Cottage, the greater part of them passed by the children in the open air, far enough from the house to make them feel sure of not disturbing Evelyn, even if they indulged in rather loud chat and laughter.
In the evening, if it were not too cool, they usually gathered upon the porch overlooking the river, and were very apt to be entertained with a story from either Grandma Elsie or Captain Raymond.
“I’m right glad to be where I can see this grand old Hudson River,” remarked Edward Leland one evening as they sat there. “It is a beautiful stream, and so much happened on it in early days.”
“What in particular are you thinking of now?” asked his mother.
“Something I read not so very long ago in Lossing’s Field Book of the Revolution. He tells of things that happened to Putnam nearly twenty years before that war. He was lying in a bateau on the east side of the river above the rapids, when he was suddenly surprised by a party of Indians. He couldn’t cross the river quickly enough to escape the danger from their rifles; so the only way to save himself from being killed or taken prisoner—which I suppose would have amounted to the same thing—was to go over those dangerous rapids. It took Putnam but an instant to decide; he steered directly down the current, between whirling eddies and over shelving rocks, cleared them all in a few moments, and was gliding along the smooth current below, far out of the reach of the Indians’ weapons. They would never have dared to go over those falls as he did, so thought he must have been favored by the Great Spirit, and that if they should try to kill him with powder and ball, that Great Spirit would consider it an affront to him.