CHAPTER XIII

In these days the picket lines were seldom stationary; one or the other faction continually drew in close these outlying guards, as if by presentiment,—an unexplained monition of caution, or perhaps because of some vague rumor of danger. Now and again, by a sudden belligerent impulse, they were impetuously attacked and driven in; but apparently in pursuance of no definite plan of aggression emanating from the main body. A few days of surly silence and stillness would ensue, and then the opposing force would return the warlike compliment with interest, holding the enemy's ground and kindling bivouac fires from the embers they had left. It seemed a sort of game of tag—a grim game; for the loss of life in these futile manœuvres amounted to far more in the long run than the few casualties in each skirmish might indicate. Sometimes these feints were entirely relinquished, and intervals of absolute inaction continued so long that it might seem a matter of doubt why the two lines were there at all, with so vague a similitude of war. Occasionally they lay so near that the individual soldiers, forgetful of sectional enmity, gave rein to mere human interest in the opportunities afforded by a common tongue and an apprehended and familiar range of feeling. A lot of tobacco, thrown into a group about a bivouac fire by an unseen hand one night, brought the next night a package of "hard tack" from over the way. Now and again long-range conversations were held, full of kindly curiosity, or humorously abusive, the questionable wit of which mightily rejoiced the heart of the lonely sentinel, and upon his relief all the jokes were duly rehearsed when once more in camp, he himself, of course, represented as coming off winner in the wordy war, being able to appropriate all the good things said by the enemy. The loud, cheerful, "Say, air you the galoot ez wuz swapping lies with Ben Smith day 'fore yestiddy?" and the response, "Smith, Smith, you say. I dis-remember the name. I guess I never heard it afore!" all were much more commendable from a merely humanitarian point of view than the singing of the minié ball or the hissing shriek of a shell that had been wont to intrude on the bland quietude of the sweet spring air.

Thus it was that Miss Mildred Fisher, accompanied by Lieutenant Seymour and one of her father's ancient friends, Colonel Monette, himself attended by a very smart orderly, riding out of Roanoke City down the long turnpike road, saw naught that might indicate active hostilities. The picturesque tents in the distance about the town, the outline of the forts against the blue sky, and afar off a gunboat in the river, were all still, all silent, all as suave as the painted incident of a picture on the wall. The turnpike itself bore heavy tokens of the war in the deeply worn holes and wheel tracks of the great wagon and artillery trains, wrought during the wet weather of the winter. It was hard going on the horses, and precluded that brisk pace and easy motion which are essential to the pleasure of the equestrian. Mildred Fisher, indeed, delighted in a breakneck speed, and it may be doubted whether it was altogether a happy animal which had the honor of bearing her light weight. As they reached a "cut off," where a "dirt road" had been recently repaired and put into fine condition to obviate the obstacles of the main travelled way, Miss Fisher proposed that they should "let the horses out" along this detour for a bit. Then she challenged the two officers for a race.

They could but accede, and indeed it would have been difficult to deny her aught. The elder looked at her with an almost paternal pride, the other with a sort of surly adoration, tempered by many a grievance and many a realized imperfection in his idol, and a spirit of revolt against the sunny whims and again the cold caprice which he and others sustained at her hands. Seymour had little to complain of just now; yet, if she smiled on him and his heart warmed to the sunshine of her eyes, the next moment he was saying to himself that it meant nothing, it was not for his sake; for she was smiling with the same degree of brightness on that whiskerando, the elderly colonel. Her face was exquisitely fair, and in horseback exercise—the luxury she loved—she tolerated no veil to protect the perfection of her complexion. Her fluffy red hair had a sheen rather like gold, because of the contrast with her damson-tinted cloth riding-habit. The hat was of the low-crowned style then worn with a feather, and this was a long ostrich plume of the same damson tint, curling down over her hair, and shading to a lighter purple. Her hazel eyes were full of joy like a child's. Her mouth was not closed for a moment,—its red lips emitting disconnected exclamations, laughter, gay banter, and sometimes just held apart, silently taking the swift rush of the air, showing the rows of even white teeth and a glimpse of the deeper red of the interior, like the heart of a crimson flower.

She tore along like the wind itself. "Madcap," who had raced before, and, sooth to say, with more numerous spectators, had thrust his head forward, striking out a long stride, and the soft, elastic, dirt road fairly flew beneath his compact hoofs. The skirt of the riding-habit—much longer than in the later fashions—floated out in the breeze of the flight, and Colonel Monette, who did not really approve outdoor sports for women, expected momently to see it catch in a thorn tree of the thickets that lined the road, or on some stake of the fragments of a ridered rail fence, and tear her from the saddle. Then, her foot being held by the stirrup perhaps, she might be dragged by Madcap or brained by one blow of the ironshod hoofs. Thus his heart was in his mouth, and he was eminently appreciative of the folly of the elderly wight who seeks to share the pleasures of the young.

The lieutenant, being young himself, was not so cautiously and altruistically apprehensive. He admired Miss Fisher's dash and courage and buoyant spirit of enjoyment, and, having a good horse, he pressed Madcap to his best devoir. Colonel Monette, to keep them in sight at all, was compelled to make very good speed, and went galloping and plunging down the road in a wild and reckless manner.

It was the elder officer who was first visited by compunctions in behalf of the horses.

"Halt!" he cried. "Halt! Miss Fisher is the winner—as she always is! Halt! Lieutenant Seymour!" Then in a lower voice when he could be heard to speak, "We shall have the horses badly blown," he said with an admonitory cadence, which reminded Seymour that a military man's whole duty does not consist in scampering after a harum-scarum girl in a race with two wild young horses.

Seeing that she was not followed, Miss Fisher reined in after several wild plunges from Madcap, who felt that he had not had his run half out, and snorted with much surprise in his full bright eyes as, turning in the road, he saw the two mounted officers far behind, stationary and waiting. The victor should never be unduly elated, but Madcap expressed his glee of triumph chiefly in his heels, curvetting and prancing, presently kicking up so uncontrollably, the excitement of the contest, the joy of racing, still surging in his veins and tense in his muscles, that the officers might well have feared some disaster to the girl. They at once put their steeds in motion to go to her assistance, but Madcap, with outstretched head, viewing their start, suddenly made a bounding volte-face in the road, and with the bit between his teeth set out at a pace that discounted his former efforts and carried him out of sight in a few minutes.

Miss Fisher, with all the courage of the red-headed Fisher family, albeit she had become pale and breathless, settled herself firmly in the saddle, held the reins in close, now and then essaying a sharp jerk, first with the right then quickly with the left hand—and it was as much as she could do to keep the saddle at these moments—to displace the grasp of his teeth on the bit. For a time these manœuvres failed, but at last the road became rougher, brambles appeared in its midst, the intention of repair had evidently ceased, and running at full tilt was no longer any great fun. The horse voluntarily slowed his pace, and the sudden jerk right and left snatched the bit from his teeth. He might still have pranced and curvetted, for the spirit of speed was not satiated, but his foot slipped on the uneven gullied ground, he stumbled, and being a town horse and seeing nowhere any promise of a good road, he resigned himself to the guidance of his rider, thinking perhaps she knew more of the country than he.

While she breathed him for a time, she looked about her along the curves of the road, seeing nothing of her companions, and realizing that she was quite alone. This gave her a sentiment of uneasiness for a moment; then she reflected that her friends were doubtless riding forward to overtake her. She drew up the reins, intending to turn, and, retracing her way, to meet them.

The place was all unfamiliar. So swift had been her transit that she had not had a moment's contemplation of the surroundings. She stood at the summit of a gentle slope and could look off toward stretches of forest, here and there interspersed with considerable acreage of cleared ground, evidently formerly farm land, now abandoned in the stress of war and the presence of contending armies. The correctness of this conclusion was confirmed by the sight of two gaunt chimneys at no great distance, between which lay a mass of charred timbers,—once the dwelling, now burned to the ground. The scene was an epitome of desolation, despite the sunshine, which indeed here was but a lonely splendor; despite the brilliance of the trumpet vine, tangled in remnants of the fence, in many a bush, and swaying in long lengths, its scarlet bugles flaring, from the boughs of overshadowing trees; despite the appeal of the elder blossoms of creamy, lacelike delicacy, catching her eye in the thickets, which were so lush, so green, so favored by the rich earth and the prodigal season. She was sensible of a clutch of dread on that merry spirit of hers before she heard a sound—a significant sound that stilled the pulsations of her heart and sent her blood cold. It was the unmistakable sinister sibilance of a shell. She saw the tiny white puff rise up above the forest, skim through the air, drop among the thickets, and then she heard the detonation of an explosion. Before she could draw her breath there came a sudden volley of musketry at a distance,—she knew that for the demonstration of regular soldiers, firing at the word,—then ensued another, and again only a patter of dropping shots. She wondered that her companions did not overtake her—she must find them—she must rejoin them,—when suddenly an object started up from the side of the road, the sight of which palsied her every muscle. A man it was who had lain in the bushes on the hillside, a man so covered with blood that he had lost every semblance of humanity. The blood still came in a steady stream from his mouth, impelled in jets, as if it were under the impulse of a pump, and he held his hand to his stomach, whence too there came blood, dripping down from his fingers. In sickened, aghast dismay she watched his approach, and as he passed she found her voice and called to him to stop,—might she not help him stanch his wounds? His staring eyes gazed vacantly forward with no recognition of the meaning of her words, and he walked deliriously on, every step sending the blood forward, draining the vital currents to exhaustion. Now she dared not turn, she could not pass that hideous apparition. She shuddered and trembled and rode irresolutely forward, just to be moving—hardly with a realized intention. Suddenly the road curved, and the scene of the conflict was before her.

The woods were dense on three sides of a wide stretch of fields that were springing green with new verdure; a portion had even been ploughed and bedded up for cotton; here and there lay strange objects in curious attitudes, which she did not at once recognize as slain men. Among them were scattered carbines, horses already dead, and more than one in scrambling agonies of dying. In the farthest vista field-guns were evidently getting in battery, ready to sweep from the earth a little force of dismounted cavalrymen who had come to close quarters with infantry and who were fighting on foot with carbines. The minié balls now and then sang sharply in the air, and in the excitement she did not realize the danger. Suddenly a puff of smoke rose from the battery, the shell winging its way high above the infantry line and at last falling among the dismounted cavalrymen, who, perceiving the situation to be hopeless, wavered, sought to rally, and at last broke and ran to the horse-holders hidden in the thickets. Thither the shells pursued them, bursting all along the plain, and as Mildred Fisher gazed she saw three men on the field, powerless to reach the shelter. One was wounded,—an officer, evidently,—and the other two were seeking to support him to his horse hard by. At this moment a fragment of shell killed the animal before their eyes.

"Ride out! Ride out!" cried Millie Fisher to a horse-holder that she observed close by in the woods. He was mounted himself, and he held the bridles of three horses. He looked half bewildered, pale, disabled. A shell burst prematurely, out of range and wide of aim, high in the air above their heads.

"I can't," he said; "I'm hit!"

"Give me the line, then!" she cried.

He was past reasoning, beyond surprise, stunned by the clamors and succumbing to wounds.

The next moment, the three great horses in a leash, Madcap led his wildest chase across that stricken plain, now shying aside as some wounded man lifted a ghastly face almost beneath his hoofs, or pitifully sought to crawl away like a maimed and dying beast. The thunder of the frenzied gallop shook the ground; the group of men, for whom the rescue was designed, turned a startled and amazed gaze as the horses came on abreast, snorting and neighing and with tossing manes and wild eyes, rushing like the steeds of Automedon.

"The gallant little game-cock!" exclaimed Jim Fisher, eying the supposed horse-holder from beside the smoking guns of his battery in the distance. "Now, I'm glad to spare him if never another man goes clear!"

For the Confederate cavalry were starting out in pursuit, and to let the squadrons pass without danger the cannonade was discontinued. The bugle's mandate, "Cease firing!" rose lilting into the air, and there was sudden silence among the guns. As Captain Fisher disengaged the strap of his field-glass seeking to adjust it, he noted that there was something continually flying out at the side of the young soldier's saddle. One glance through the magnifying lenses at the floating folds of the riding-habit and the radiant face crowned by the purple plume—and Jim Fisher almost fell under the wheel of the limber as it was run up to the gun-carriage. "My God, Watt!" he exclaimed to his first lieutenant who was also his brother, "that—that—cavalryman is—is Sister Millie!"

When she was at last with them, for in tumultuous agitation they had rushed forward to meet her, beckoning and shouting, and their kisses had smeared the gunpowder from their grim countenances to her lovely roseate cheeks, they began to experience the reactionary effects of their fright and scolded her with great rancor, declaring repeatedly they felt much disposed, even yet, to slap her. All of which had no effect at all on Millie Fisher. They tried æsthetic methods of reducing her to see her deed from their standpoint.

"I thought you were a patriotic girl, Sister," one of them urged. "And see, now—you have helped three Yankees to escape!"

"I am patriotic—more patriotic than anybody," she asseverated. "But I forgot they were Yankees—they were just three men in great danger!"

"But you were in great danger, Sister, I—I—might have shot you!"

"Didn't you feel funny when you found out who 'twas?" she queried with a giggle of great zest.

"I felt mighty funny," said Jim Fisher, grimly. "I suppose few men have ever felt so funny!"

Few men have ever looked less funny than he as he reflected on the episode. He recovered his equanimity only gradually, but especially after he had been able to make arrangements to convey intelligence to his mother within the Federal lines as to his sister's safety. This was rendered possible by a flag of truce sent out almost immediately by Colonel Monette, who with Lieutenant Seymour was in the greatest anxiety as to her fate, feeling a sense of responsibility in the matter. She insisted on adding a line addressed to the younger officer, bidding him sing daily with his hand on his heart:—

"'Would I were with thee!'—In the Confederate lines!"

if he expected her to conserve any faith in his constancy.

That evening Jim Fisher almost regained his wonted cheerfulness. The other four brothers had gathered together to welcome the unexpected guest, and as they sat around a great wood fire in an old deserted farm-house, a primitive structure built of logs, with Millie and the youngest, favorite brother, Walter, in the centre, it seemed so joyful a reunion that he was almost tempted to forgive the manner in which it had come about.

Jim Fisher's body-servant, Cæsar, cooked a supper for them, in a room across an open passage, consisting of corn-bread, bean-coffee, bacon, and a chicken, which last came as a miracle, as he mysteriously expressed it, upon inquiry—"as de mussy ob Providence!" Cæsar was a brisk young darkey, with a capacity for a sullen and lowering change, and with a great distaste for ridicule, induced by much suffering as the butt of the practical jokes of his young masters, for among so many Fisher boys one or another must needs be always disposed for mirth.

"You needn't ax me so p'inted 'bout dat chicken's pedigree, Marse Watt," Cæsar was beguiled into retorting acrimoniously. "Naw, sah. I dunno. I dunno whedder hit's Dominicky or Shanghai. An' ye have no call to know whedder hit's foreign or native! I tell you hit's fried—an' dat's all I'm gwine ter tell you!—fried ter a turn! An' if you bed enny religion, you'd say grace, an' give Miss Millie a piece while it's hot. Naw, sah! naw, Marse Watt! I ain't no robber! Marse Jim—you hear what Marse Watt done call me! Naw, sah! I don't expec' ter see Satan!—not dis week, nohow."

Cæsar was glad to gather up the fragments and make off to the kitchen opposite, where he sat before the fire and crunched the last bone of the precious fowl, and grinned over the adroit methods of its capture on this great occasion, for such a luxury could hardly be bought at any price, in Confederate money or any other currency.

After supper was despatched something of a levee was held; so many of Miss Millie Fisher's old friends—officers in the military force—called to renew the acquaintance of happier times. And as she recognized the more intimate old playfellows or neighbors, with a gush of delighted little screams and a musical acclaim of their Christian names, sometimes an old half-forgotten nickname, other guests, later acquaintances, were envious and wistful, and sought to stem the tide of reminiscence, the "Don't you remembers" and "Oh-h-h, wasn't it funny?" and to impress the values of the present, despite the lures of the past.

She was delightfully gracious and gay with them all, and perhaps she had never seemed more lovely than the flicker of the firelight revealed her, for there were no other means of illumination. She stood to receive in the centre of the floor, radiant in her dark purple riding-habit and hat, the military figures, all in full uniform, clustering about her, some resting on their swords, some half leaning on a comrade's shoulder, while jest and repartee went around, the laughter now and again making the rafters ring. It was with reluctance that they gradually tore themselves away in obedience to a realization that after so long a separation the family might desire to spend the evening alone, for three of the brothers must needs repair to their own command at some distance at break of day, and it might be long before they could all be together once more.

So at last, the visitors gone, the door barred, the night wearing on, the Fishers gathered round the replenished fire, for the air was chill and the warmth was as welcome as the light. The deserted house was entirely bare of furniture, and as the force was a "flying column," flung forward without the impediments of baggage trains or tents, there was not even a camp-stool available. Millie and Watt sat side by side on a billet of wood, their arms around each other's waists to preserve the equilibrium, and the rest of the brothers half reclined on the saddles on the floor. And every face was smiling, and every head was red. Again and again a shout of laughter went up, as she detailed the news of the town,—and some very queer things, indeed, she told,—and Watt, the lieutenant, responded with the news of the battery and the camp.

Perhaps he felt that his prestige as a wit was threatened, for once he said, "I'd give a hundred dollars, Sister, to be assured that all you are telling is the truth."

"I wouldn't give a brass thimble to be assured that all you are telling is the truth, for I know 'tisn't!" retorted Millie.

"Oh, I meant in Confederate money!" He lowered the face value of his bid.

They kept late hours that night; but at last, when the fire was burning low and great masses of coals had accumulated, they swung a military cloak hammock-wise across a corner of a little inner room, hardly more than a cupboard, and this Millie Fisher in her new rôle as a campaigner found a comfortable bed enough. The restricted apartment had no window, and no door save the one opening into the larger room; and this she set ajar, making Walter place a great solid shot against it lest it close, declaring that if that catastrophe should supervene, she should die of solitary fright. The five Fisher brothers were well within call and sight, as they clustered around the embers, talking for a time in low voices of what had chanced in the interval of their separation. For only Jim and Watt were together in the same company. They commented on the relative cost and value of their chaussure, as they stretched out their long, booted legs, with their feet on the hearth, and compared the wearing qualities of the soles and upper leather. They looked kindly into each other's faces and laughed as they made a point, and between the two younger brothers, Watt and Lucien, there was a disposition to horse-play, manifested in unexpected tweaks, that each was glad to receive as a compliment, so did separation and the sense of an imminent and ever environing danger soften and make tender their fraternal sentiment. But first one, then another, flung his cloak around him and, pillowing his head on his saddle, lay down to rest, the two younger brothers the last of all.

And now—silence. The dull red light of the embers gloomed on the daubed and chinked walls of the old log house, with its rude puncheon floor. The five prostrate, cloaked figures upon it were still, asleep. Here and there from amongst the arms, placed ready to seize at a moment's notice, came a keen steely gleam. Mildred could hear the sentry's tread outside up and down before the door. Once, far away, she noted the measured tramp of marching feet, then a challenge, and anon, "Stand! Grand Rounds! Advance, Sergeant, with the countersign!" and presently the march was resumed in the distance. And again—silence! Only the wind astir in the forest, only the rustle of the lush foliage. All—how different from her dainty bedroom where she had spent last night, the downy couch, the silken coverlet, the velvet carpet, the lace curtains, the tremulous flicker of the wind in the flower-stand on the balcony!

"Hugh!" she said suddenly.

Every red head on the floor had lifted at the sound, and every hand had clutched a weapon.

"What's the matter, Sister?"

"I—I—believe there must be a flying squirrel or—or—something in the wall. Don't they build in old walls? I've seen that in some book."

Jim and Hugh arose and investigated the wall of the inner room by means of a torch of light-wood.

"Why, Sister, it is as solid as a rock!" Jim asseverated. "There's no flying squirrel here."

He extinguished the flaming torch in the ashes banked in the chimney-place in the larger room, and again the two brothers laid themselves down to rest, with their feet on the hearth.

Once more the silence of the night, the vague crumbling of the ash, the measured sound of the sentry's tread. There was no echo of the passing of time—but how leaden-footed! How slowly fared the night! How motionless lay those cloaked figures, each with his head on his saddle!

"Watt," her voice came plaintively out of the gloom. "I'm scared!"

This time, though all stirred, they did not rise.

"Pshaw! Scared of what?"

She did not answer. Only after a time she queried irrelevantly, "Can mice climb?"

"Did you see that in a book, too?" asked Watt.

"They can only climb under certain conditions," opined Hugh, sleepily.

"But they'd scorn to intrude on a lady in a hammock, Sister," declared George.

"Oh, hush, George!" said Jim, authoritatively. "No mouse can get up there, Sister. Why don't you go to sleep?"

"I can't," said Millie Fisher, plaintively. "I saw so many awful things to-day!"

"You had better think about mice," said Watt, quickly, to effect a diversion. "They are minute, but monstrous. Just imagine how one could scale the wall, and taking its tail under its left arm spring across to your hammock, and run along, say, the nape of your neck! Oh-h-h! wouldn't that be just aw-w-wful!"

"Oh, hush, Watt!" said Jim. "Just compose your mind, Sister. Shut your eyes and think about nothing."

"Think how nearly you scared a gallant captain of artillery out of his seven senses to-day," suggested Watt, anew. "I thought Jim would get run over by the gun-carriages and the caissons, whether or no. He was so scatter-brained, and white, and wild-eyed, and blundering—nearly under the horses' feet."

Millie Fisher gave a pleased little laugh.

"Was he? Was he, truly?"

"He was, for a fact. Few captains of artillery have the opportunity to make their own sister a target in a regular knock-down-and-drag-out fight. I thought I was going to have to support the gentleman off the field of battle. He couldn't stand up for a while."

"How funny!" exclaimed Millie Fisher, delightedly. "Just too funny."

She shifted her position in the hammock, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again the sun was flaring into the open door and window of the large room, and all the five Fisher brothers were up and fully accoutred for the duty of the service, and she was requested to get out of the hammock that it might again be turned into a cloak.

The details of her exploit were brought back to the main body of the Federal army and bruited abroad by the men whom she had rescued from death or capture. One of these, the officer, was much disposed to vaunt his gratitude and sense of obligation, and as Miss Millie Fisher was as well known as the river itself, the incident created no small stir in many different circles. The girl was held to be a prodigy of courage. All the men of the family were known to be brave, eke to say, fractious. There had been seldom a row of any sort, in several generations, in which a Fisher's red head had not been in the thick of it, and held high. There were several who were now men of mark, but never had aught else so appealed to their pulse of pride, their close bond of union in family ties and clannish affection for which they were noted. Great were the boastings of the Fisher brothers, each feeling that he shone by reflected light, and echoes of their vain-glorious brag were borne to the storm centre by that mysterious means of communication known as the Grape-vine Telegraph.

One day Seymour detailed, with a touch of bitter sarcasm, the rumor that Jim Fisher had declared that Sister Millie could stampede the whole Yankee army if she had the chance. With his customary bluntness Seymour had broached the subject on a hospitable occasion, in a group both of officers and civilians. The latter said nothing, leaving it to the comrades of the men who had benefited by her hair-brained bravery and dashing equestrianism to controvert the hyperbole. But Ashley's tact was so rooted in good nature that it was difficult to take him amiss. He could not say, he declared, whether she could stampede the army, but he could testify that she had captured it.

The Grape-vine was shortly burdened with other rumors that were of far more import to Seymour, who was of a serious mind, and of an exacting, not to say, petulant, temper. These traits had been intensified by his recent subjection to the whims and caprices of a coquette of exceptional capacity, for his feelings were deeply involved. He was truly in love, and all his dearest interests hung on the uncertain telegraphy of the Grape-vine. It was an unhappy time for him, when he doubted in a rush of hope, and again believed sunk in the despondency of absolute despair, having almost as much foundation for the one as the other, the reports of her marriage to Lawrence Lloyd.

This time the Grape-vine had proved a reliable medium of information. Colonel Lloyd had sought and secured leave of absence long enough to ride fifty miles across country to greet her as soon as he had heard she was within the Confederacy. When her father joined the family party Colonel Lloyd laid siege for his consent to an immediate marriage.

They had long been engaged, he urged.

"I had almost forgotten that," Millie interpolated. She had promised her assistance in the persuasion of her father, and thus she fulfilled her pledge.

"There is no reason for further delay," Lloyd insisted.

"I have been a débutante these—four—years!" she suggested demurely.

Lloyd submitted that he hoped there were no objections to him in Colonel Fisher's estimation.

"Except such as are insuperable—you'll never be any better," suggested Millie.

It would be undesirable, even dangerous, Lloyd argued, to send her back to her home in Roanoke City with a flag of truce in the present state of conflict.

"But it is not at all dull there—" she interrupted vivaciously. "Some very nice Yankee officers are in society there—several old friends of yours, papa. Colonel Monette and Lieutenant-Colonel Blake of the regular army—old classmates of yours. And some others whom you don't know—Captain Baynell, who is very handsome, and Colonel Ashley—he belongs to the volunteers; he is most agreeable and highly thought of, and oh—of course Lieutenant Seymour—oh, it is not dull there!"

Lloyd looked at her in blank dismay, and the blank dismay on the face of her father was nearly as marked, but the latter's anxiety was due to a different cause—what would his wife decide if she were here!—for every one who knew the Fishers was well aware that Guy Fisher, albeit a man of much force in his own domain of business or military life, "sung mighty small" in all matters in which his wife had concern.

Lloyd rallied to the attack and continued to explain that he had orders detaching him, showing that he would be stationary, in command of a fort in the far South for some time, and that Millie would be in a position to be comfortable.

"But can I ride horseback there?" she stipulated. "I have just found out what I can do in that line!"

She liked to describe this conversation afterward. Her lover was the most serious and literal-minded of men, anxious and doubtful, and her father the prey of vacillation and indecision. They looked alternately at her and at each other with an expression of startled bewilderment as she spoke, seeking to adjust what she had said with their own knowledge of the facts.

The flying column was once more in motion, and one evening, after a considerable distance southward had been accomplished, the leave both of Colonel Fisher and Colonel Lloyd being close upon expiration and decision exigent, the doubting, anxious father gave his consent.

The young people were married like campaigners under a tree in a beautiful magnolia grove, the rhododendron blooming everywhere in the woods and the mocking-birds in full song. Colonel Lloyd was in uniform, armed and spurred, Miss Fisher in her hat and riding-habit, which last she wore with peculiar elegance; as the skirts of the day were of great length, the superfluous folds were caught up and carried over one arm, and it was said she had attained her graceful proficiency in this art, which was esteemed of much difficulty, by constant practice before the long mirror in her wardrobe at home. She used to tell afterward of the beautiful site, the velvet turf, the magnolia blooms, the rhododendron blossoms, the singing mocking-birds. Then she would enumerate the brilliant martial assemblage that witnessed the ceremony, the men of high rank in full uniform; the wives of a number of them—refugees in the Confederacy "seeking for a home," as the sardonically humorous song of that day phrased it—also graced the occasion. Her father and brothers, all the six Fisher men, were present, and she used to say, with the tone of an after-thought, but with a glint of mischief in her eye, "And Colonel Lloyd—he was there, too!"

There, but hardly up to the standard. He was a man whose courage had been of especial note, even in those days when bravery seemed the rule. He had had, too, exceptional opportunities to display his mettle. But on this occasion his terror was so palpable that he trembled perceptibly; he was pale and agitated; he fumbled for the ring and occasioned a general fear that he might let it fall—altogether furnishing an admirable exhibition of the stage fright usual with bridegrooms.

All these details did she observe and recollect and even his gravity would relax as she rehearsed them in after years. It was considered one of the evidences of her incurable frivolity that she seemed to care nothing for that momentous incident of her experience in those days, hardly to remember it,—the exploit by which she had saved the lives of three men, sore harassed and beset; but she found endless source of interest in the reminiscence of trifles such as the incongruous aspect of the chaplain who officiated at the wedding ceremony, with his spurs showing on his reverend heels beneath his surplice, and the brass buttons on his sleeves as he lifted his hands in benediction,—which afforded her a glee of retrospect.