"Knight-errant and Saracen in one? That's difficult."
"Nothing is so difficult as life, nor so strange. And, perhaps, love and hate are both illnesses. Sometimes I think so."
"A happy recovery then! You are too good a fellow—"
"I am not a good fellow."
"You are not at least an amiable one to-night! Don't let the fever get too high!"
"Will you listen," said Stafford, "to the wind in the pines? and did you ever see the automatic chess-player?"
Two days later, Frémont, having bridged the Shenandoah, crossed, and pushed his cavalry with an infantry support southward by the pike. About three in the afternoon of the sixth, Ashby's horses were grazing in the green fields south of Harrisonburg, on the Port Republic road. To the west stretched a belt of woodland, eastward rose a low ridge clad with beech and oak. The green valley lay between. The air, to-day, was soft and sweet, the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily, through an amethyst haze. The men lay among dandelions. Some watched the horses; others read letters from home, or, haversack for desk, wrote some vivid, short-sentenced scrawl. A number were engaged by the rim of the clear pool. Naked to the waist, they knelt like washerwomen, and rubbed the soapless linen against smooth stones, or wrung it wrathfully, or turning, spread it, grey-white, upon the grass to dry. Four played poker beneath a tree, one read a Greek New Testament, six had found a small turtle, and with the happy importance of boys were preparing a brushwood fire and the camp kettle. Others slept, head pillowed on arm, soft felt hat drawn over eyes. The rolling woodland toward Harrisonburg and Frémont was heavily picketed. A man rose from beside the pool, straightened himself, and holding up the shirt he had been washing looked at it critically. Apparently it passed muster, for he painstakingly stretched it upon the grass and taking a pair of cotton drawers turned again to the water. A blue-eyed Loudoun youth whistling "Swanee River" brought a brimming bucket from the stream that made the pool and poured it gleefully into the kettle. A Prince Edward man, lying chest downward, blew the fire, another lifted the turtle. The horses moved toward what seemed lusher grass, one of the poker players said "Damn!" the reader turned a leaf of the Greek Testament. One of the sleepers sat up. "I thought I heard a shot—"
Perhaps he had heard one; at any rate he now heard many. Down the road and out from under the great trees of the forest in front burst the pickets driven in by a sudden, well-directed onslaught of blue cavalry—Frémont's advance with a brigade of infantry behind. In a moment all was haste and noise in the green vale. Men leaped to their feet, left their washing, left the turtle simmering in the pot, the gay cards upon the greensward, put up the Greek Testament, the home letters, snatched belt and carbine, caught the horses, saddled them with speed, swung themselves up, and trotted into line, eyes front—Ashby's men.
The pickets had their tale to tell. "Burst out of the wood—the damned Briton again, sir, with his squadrons from New Jersey! Rode us down—John Ferrar killed—Gilbert captured—You can see from the hilltop there. They are forming for a charge. There's infantry behind—Blinker's Dutch from the looks of them!"
"Blinker's Dutch," said the troopers. "'Hooney,' 'Nix furstay,' 'Bag Jackson,' 'Kiss und steal,' 'Hide under bed,' 'Rifle bureau drawers,' 'Take lockets und rings'—Blinker's Dutch! We should have dog whips!"