As she sat there on the rail fence, explaining the geography of the region round about, we all fell in love with her as troopers should, so far at least as to be ready to do any conceivable deed of derring-do in her behalf. But Lieutenant Wilds fell in love with her in fuller fashion, as was afterwards made manifest.
She sat there on the fence curled up most entrancingly and expounded the geography of the country with great minuteness. But when she tried to tell us just where a certain strong Federal post was, which we very much wanted to attack, she grew impatient of words.
Turning to a negro boy she said: “Saddle Saladin. I’ll go and show them.”
Three minutes later she was in the saddle. Half an hour afterwards Charlie Irving, our captain who had joined us and taken command, gently ordered her to the rear. As I have related in another book of reminiscences she refused to obey. She said: “I believe you are going to charge those fellows, and I want to see the fun.”
Well, she saw the fun. We made the charge. At the end of it Lieutenant Wilds was more in love with her than ever.
As we escorted her back to her home she broke into song. Her song was the old English ballad which begins:—
“In days of old, when knights were bold,
And barons held their sway.”
As she sang, she laid special stress upon two passages in the ballad. One was the line where the hero says:—
“I’ll live for love or die.”