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There were four members of the Senate present, two wives of members who had been unable to come, and three eminent Representatives. It was seldom that Mrs. Fonda's invitations were declined, for no man went to her house with the miserable conviction that he was about to eat his twenty-seventh dinner by the same cook. Mrs. Fonda had picked up a woman in Belgium who was a genius.
We halted and looked down the empty, trodden trail, stretching away through the forest. Thousands and thousands of light, moccasined feet had worn it deep and patted it hard as a sheep-path. On what mission would the next Mohawk feet be speeding on that trail? "Those people at Fonda's Bush had best move to Johnstown," said Dorothy.
Ride on, George, and tell those rebel fools at Fonda's Bush that they should be hunting cover in the forts if folk at the Fish-House read that smoke aright. Follow the Brandt-Meester if Dorothy slips you, and tell her I'll birch her, big as she is, if she's not home by the new moon rise."
The patroon was waiting for us when we came to the weather-beaten finger-post: "FONDA'S BUSH 4 MILES." And Peter Van Horn had already ridden into the broad, soft wood-road, when Dorothy, swinging her horse past him at a gallop, cried out, "I want to go with them! Please let me!" And was gone like a deer, tearing away down the leafy trail.
He is a handsome lad, and married, here in Alcala, the beauty of the town, in spite of his mother's wounded pride. It was a love-match of stolen wooing and secret wedding, but, ha! ha! we saw it all, knew it all, before even they did themselves. Many an evening have I met them on these roads, billing and cooing like the doves on La Fonda's eaves.
Farther still to the northward stretched the Vale and silvery Sacandaga with its pretty Fish House settlement now in ashes; and Summer House Point and Fonda's Bush were but heaps of cinders, too, the brave Broadalbin yeomen prisoners, their women and children fled to Johnstown, save old man Stoner and his boys, and that Tory villain Charlie Cady who went off with Sir John.
The reproof struck home; Mount muttered his apology; Murphy offered to carry my rifle if I was fatigued. "It was thoughtless, I admit that," said Elerson, looking backward, uneasily. "But we're close to the patroon's boundary." "We're within bounds now," said Mount. "Fonda's Bush lies over there to the southeast, and the Vlaie is yonder below the mountain-notch.
"Teach you! and the whole breed o' black Campbells from Perth to Galway and Fonda's Bush, which ye dub Broadalbin. I had rather be a Monteith and have the betrayal of Wallace cast in my face than be a Campbell of Argyle wi' the memory o' Glencoe to follow me to hell." "Silence!" roared the patroon, struggling to his feet.
I had learned at Fonda's that young Philip Cross was cutting a great swath, socially, in the Valley, and that he was building a grand mansion, fully as large as Johnson Hall, nearly at the summit of the eminence which crowned his patent. Major Fonda was, indeed, contracting to furnish the bricks for what he called the "shimlies," and the house was, by all accounts, to be a wonderful affair.
This was the Balston trail, which joined the Fish-House road; and Sir George said it was the trail I should have followed had it not been necessary for me to meet him at Fonda's Bush to relieve him of his horse.
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