Putnam patriot., 1925-04-03

her face and speech, not entirely as-
 sumed, was listening to him willing ly.
 He with a not too creditable repu-
 tation with women. even then, was
 playing with her. She despite the
 knowledge of thirty-five in a body of
 fifteen, was falling in love with him
 as much as she ever was able to fall
 in love with any one. Years after,
 across q long series of intervening affairs. she wrote in her memoirs that
 Aaron Burr had been ..the love of
 my life" The choice could not have
 been made without considerable diff eulty.
 I Subject to Attack
 Where the New York Elizabeth port road was joined by the highway from the Ramapo Hills and the Oranges, men burst out from the reeds and scrub at either side of the road and attacked the party, scream ing and shooting They were skin ners" who, seeing the approach of the cavalcade had mistakenly judged them to be civilians because of the woman in the van, and had prepared an ann bush.
 ] Burr's saber flashed out and he bel lowed to his men. They came to his aid with sword and pistol. For n | few minutes the road was choked with struggling men and plunging horses. Guns banged like a string of crackers and then were silent for the fight was too bitter to permit re- loading. Two of the Skinners grip ped Margaret Monerieffe and tried to drag her from the saddle. She pulled her pistols from the holsters on her saddle and shot one of her assailants through the throat, the other through the chest. Then she ] trotted her horse out of the melee and calmly began reloading her wea- pons.
 1 Burr. dripping saber in hand, rein cd iii his horse and shouted to her to ride to safety. She smiled as she shook her head and continued ram ming the charge down a pistol muz- ble. In a few minutes the fight was over. The Skinners fled, leaving their dead in the road and two prisoners in the hands of the troopers. Burr AO Ailt iRAA1FtA by both armies when dealing with these free-booters and ordeged them hanged to a nearby tree which for a hundred years thereafter was point ed out as 'spy oak. The sixteen year old girl witnessed the hanging quite as calmly as she had the bitter struggle of few minutes before. A Soldiers Daughter
 'I am a soldiers daughter" she said quietly, when Burr compliment ed her upon her craftsmanship and self lf-possession.
 They guided their weary horses, at length, aboard the bateau that waited for them at Paulus Hoeek. i Dusk had fallen on the Hudson as | they started across it's sweep. Burr and she sat together in the stern of i the craft. While he leaned close to her whispering his infatuation, she must have seen the lights of the .sDuchess of Gordon" gleaming through the haze of that spring eve ming.
 Whatever she may have seemed to Burr in that journey across the river in the May twilight, she was a little i girl, tired and wistful in the hiek- l ering candle light of the Putnam l home. Mrs. Putnam folded her m | motheriy arms, a little more warmly perhaps because this child with the II face and form of an aristoerat had dropped shy curtesy and called the plain New England housewife my lady" H Quite simply, she had held up her lovely face for the stout old general to kiss and had asked timidly if she might call him grandpa. She was SC alone in the world, she explained with A catch in her voice. Putnam clear. ed his throat and blinked rapidly. Il was a touching scene.
 She won over the Putnam daugh ters within the next twenty-four hours
 by her praise of their housewifery !, She admitted sadly that she could moi spin. weave or sew. She announced I enthusiastically that they were amaz. ] ;nslv skilled mistressez of those arts. I She could draw and paint little. 1 She would be glad to instruct them 1 if they would teach her their lovely handiwork.
 Soldiers Flirt
 Yet she reported seldom for such i instruction. The big brick house echo ed from morning to night with the
 tramp of soldiers, not only the sen
 tries under the supervision of Cor
 poral Hickey, who. now that the Com.
 mander-in-Chief was absent, guarded
 his temporary successor, but officers frou inc regiments of the garrison, coming to report to Putnam and lin gering thereafter to fiirt with the amazingly attractive and provocative girl the Major General had taken into his home. ,, She was a strange child, the Put namg told each other. For an houi st a time, she would fiirt with oifi. rers ike A past mistress of the ari and then, all at once, she would evadt them and stroll by herself, up and down the sea wall, lonely and ap peaiing little figure,
 Word of the girls beauty rar q A s L.