Page:A Little Country Girl - Coolidge (1887).djvu/147

 introductions, and she was too shy to open a conversation with anybody.

"How I wish I knew!" she sighed to herself, half aloud.

Looking up, she met the shrewd, twinkling eyes of the Captain. Perhaps he had caught the words, for he asked encouragingly, "Did you speak, Miss?"

"No," said Candace, "I don't think I spoke. But I was wondering about that—that—thing up there," pointing to the Fort.

"That? That's Fort Dumpling, as folks call it. It is a kind of a queer old place, ain't it? They don't use it now for no war purposes, but it makes a pretty p'int in the landscape, and folks go there for picnics and such in the summer season."

"When was it built?" asked Candace, charmed to find somebody able and willing to satisfy her curiosity.

"Wa'al, I reckon it was about 1812, when we was a-tackling the British for the last time. 'Tain't very much of a fort to look at; but if you was to mount some of them pow-