Full of curiosity I asked: “What do you mean, Hopper?”
He answered: “Nothing—Just counting—Settling a score!”
It was only a few days later when we were at Falls Church. Young Hopper’s score read twenty, when he asked permission to ride out and personally encounter an officer who had separated himself from his command. The permission was given. Hopper leaped upon his mare, drew his sword, and galloped toward the officer. They met in mid field. The officer fired just as the boy clove him to the saddle. Hopper fell forward on his horse and rode back to the lines.
As he rolled off the saddle, he said: “I’m done for, boys, but I’ve made it twenty-one without counting a single disputed bird.” Then, feebly, he broke into song, singing,—
“I’ve kept the vow I swore.”
Before we buried him in the Hope cemetery the next day, the captain told me that Charlie Hopper was none other than Charlotte Hope.
But I had guessed the secret that day when she had refused to count the “disputed bird.”
A BEEF EPISODE
WE had no rations at Bluffton, in South Carolina.
The sea was there with its multitudinous fish, and crabs and shrimps, and with its mountainous banks of oysters. There were turkeys and deer and squirrels in the woods, and quail and marsh fowl in the fields. We were expected to take care of ourselves.