etter, 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.

CHAPTER III

A FLASH OF STEEL

That night we sat at the long table in the dining-room of the inn. All
up and down its great length sat the officers of the Line--country
gentlemen from Cecil, Kent, and as far south as Queen Anne, who had
ridden thus far to see the mustering and to give it their countenance
and their favour. Grave and sedate gentlemen many of them, men of
affairs, the leaders of their counties, and delegates to the
Convention and to Congress--men of the oldest and bluest blood in the
province, of wide estates and famous names, whose families wielded a
mighty influence in the cause of the patriots and gave it stability
and great strength.

Then there was the parson, a merry old gentleman, stout of form, with
a round face and twinkling eyes, who in his youth was a mighty