"Sometimes," I said. "Last winter the bay was frozen to Staten Island so that the artillery crossed on the ice from the city."
She turned her head, looking out over the water, which was now all a golden sparkle under the westering sun. Then her eyes dropped to the burned district--that waste of blackened ruins stretching south along Broadway to Beaver Street and west to Greenwich Street.
"Is that the work of rebels?" she asked, frowning.
"No, madam; it was an accident."
"Why do the New Yorkers not rebuild?"
"I think it is because General Washington interrupts local improvements," I said, laughing.
She looked around at me, pretty brows raised in quaint displeasure.
"Does the insolence of a rebel really amuse you, Mr. Renault?"
I was taken aback. Even among the British officers here in the city it had become the fashion to speak respectfully of the enemy, and above all of his Excellency.
"Why should it not amuse me?" I asked lightly.
She had moved her head again, and appeared to be absorbed in the view. Presently she said, still looking out over the city: "That was a noble church once, that blackened arch across the way."
"That is Trinity--all that is left of it," I said. "St. Paul's is still standing--you may see it there to the north, just west of Ann Street and below Vesey."
She turned, leaning on the railing, following with curious eyes the direction of my outstretched arm.
"Please tell me more about this furnace you call a city, Mr. Renault," she said, with a pretty inflection of voice that flattered; and so I went over beside her, and, leaning there on the cupola rail together, we explored the damaged city from our bird's perch above it--the city that I had come to care for strangely, nay, to love almost as I loved my Mohawk hills. For it is that way with New York, the one city that we may love without disloyalty to our birthplace, a city which is home in a larger sense, and, in a sense, almost as dear to men as the birth-spot which all cherish. I know not why, but this is so; no American is long strange here; for it is the great hearth of the mother-land where the nation gathers as a family, each conscious of a share in the heritage established for all by all.
And so, together, this fair young English girl and I traced out the wards numbered from the cardinal points of the compass, and I bounded for her the Out-Ward, too, and the Dock-Ward. There was no haze, only a living golden light, clear as topaz, and we could see plainly the sentinels pacing before the Bridewell--that long two-storied prison, built of gloomy stone; and next to it the Almshouse of gray stone, and next to that the massive rough stone prison, three stories high, where in a cupola an iron bell hung, black against the sky.