the establishment, presented the fair
Amazon with a military cross of merit. The poor girl was delighted
with the decoration, and besought the "King" to allow her to return to
the regiment, as she said she was more accustomed to inflicting wounds
than to healing them. In fact, she so implored to be permitted to
serve once more as a soldier, that at last, Don Carlos, to extricate
himself from the difficulty, said, "No, I cannot allow you to join a
regiment of men; but when I form a battalion of women, I promise, upon
my honour, that you shall be named the Colonel."

"It will never happen," said the girl, and she burst into tears as the
King left the hospital.

At Haddon Hall may still be seen "Dorothy Vernon's Door," whence the
heiress of Haddon stole out one moonlight night to join her lover. The
story generally told is that, while her elder sister, the affianced
bride of Sir Thomas Stanley, second son of the Earl of Derby, was made
much of in her recognised attachment, Dorothy, on the other hand, was
not only kept in the background, but every obstacle was thrown in her
way against a connection she had formed with John Manners, son of the
Earl of Rutland. But "something of the wild bird," it is said, "was
noticed in Dorothy, and she was closely watched, kept almost a
prisoner, and could only beat her wings against the bars that confined
her." This kind of surveillance went on for some time, but did not
check the young lady's infatuation for her lover, and it was not long
before the young couple contrived to see one another. Disguised as a
woodman, John Manners lurked of a day in the woods round Haddon for
several weeks, obtaining now and then a stolen glance, a hurried word,
or a pressure of the hand from the fair Dorothy.

At length, however, an opportunity arrived which enabled Dorothy to
carry out the plan which had been suggested to her by John Manners. It
so happened that a grand ball was given at Haddon Hall, to celebrate
the approaching marriage of the elder daughter, and, whilst a throng
of guests filled the ball-room, where the stringed minstrels played
old dances in the Minstrels' Gallery, and the horns blew low, everyone
being too busy with his own interests and pleasures to attend to those
of another, the young Miss Dorothy stole away unobserved from the
ball-room, "passed out of the door, which is now one of the most
interesting parts of this historic pile of buildings, and crossed
the terrace to where,