"Yes," replied his father. "Her husband, General Riedesel, and others, urgently remonstrated against the unnecessary and imprudent delay, and counselled hasty retreat; but Burgoyne would not listen to their prudent advice. While the storm beat upon his hungry, weary soldiers lying without on the rain-soaked ground, he and his mates held high carnival within, spending the night in merry-making, drinking, and carousing."
"What a foolish fellow!" said Max. "I wonder that he didn't rather spend it in slipping away from the Americans through the darkness and storm."
"Or in getting ready to fight them again the next day," added Lulu.
"I think there was fighting the next day,--wasn't there, Papa?" said Max.
"Yes; though not a regular battle. Burgoyne was attempting a retreat, which the Americans, constantly increasing in numbers, were preventing,--destroying bridges, obstructing roads leading northward, and guarding the river to the eastward, so that the British troops could not cross it without exposure to a murderous artillery fire. At last, finding his provisions nearly exhausted, himself surrounded by more than five times his own number of troops, and all his positions commanded by his enemy's artillery, the proud British general surrendered."
"And it was a great victory,--wasn't it, Papa?" asked Lulu.
"It was, indeed! and God, the God of our fathers, gave it to the American people. The time was one of the great crises of history. Before that battle things looked very dark for the people of this land; and if Burgoyne had been victorious, the probability is that the struggle for liberty would have been given up for no one knows how long. Perhaps we might have been still subject to England."
"And that would be dreadful!" she exclaimed with warmth,--"wouldn't it, Max?"
"Yes, indeed!" he assented, his cheek flushing, and his eye kindling; "the idea of this great country being governed by that bit of an island away across the sea! I just feel sometimes as if I'd like to have helped with the fight."
"In that case," returned his father, with an amused look, "you would hardly be here now; or, if you were, you would be old enough to be my grandfather."
"Then I'm glad I wasn't, sir," laughed Max; "for I'd rather be your son by a great deal. Papa, wasn't it about that time the stars and stripes were first used?"