"You risk your life," he said, "for the slightest spark or indiscretion will bring a mob, boiling and seething around you. The officers will not be able to hold the men in, as they are only volunteers, and have not yet felt the hand of discipline."
But Charles Gordon shrugged his shoulders, and his reply came distinct and clear: "I thought you knew me better, McLean. I would not hide my head for a hundred or a thousand of them;" and he turned and went into the inn.
The innkeeper made a gesture of despair. "That is always the way," said he, "both in this country and the old; tell a Gordon of a danger and he will rush right into it, and then expect to come out safe and sound."
We laughed, for the expression on the old Scotchman's face was so droll.
"But now for your room, gentlemen;" and he led the way to a small room under the gable roof. "It is the only room I have left," he said, "but you are welcome to it."
It was now somewhat late in the afternoon, but having made ourselves presentable and partaken of a lunch, we went to report ourselves to Captain Ramsay of the 1st Regiment of the Maryland Line.
He received us at his tent door with a warm grasp of the hand. "You are the very lads I have been waiting for," he said. "I have two Lieutenancies to fill, and you are the men to fill them."
"But, Captain," said Dick Ringgold, "we have not been tried yet. Let us go into the ranks and fight our way up, as so many better men than we are doing."
I could not help admiring Dick for his modesty, and though I, too, said the same thing, I confess I hoped the Captain would not hear of it, and so it proved.
"No, no," he said, and patted Dick on the shoulder. "I must have you; I know the blood that runs in your veins, lads, and that I will have no better fighting stock in the army." And thus it was settled, and we became officers in that Maryland Line, and—I say it with all due modesty—the most famous of all the fighting regiments in the struggle for the Great Cause.