you see, I betray the cloven hoof of fear, even when I write
you. It's a good thing that I know I am naturally a coward;
because I may learn to be so ashamed of my legs that I'll never run
at all, either way.

"Dear, I'm too honest with you to make promises, and far too
intelligent not to know that when people begin shooting at each
other somebody is likely to get hit. It is instinctive in me to
avoid mutilation and extemporary death if I can do it. I realise
what it means when the air is full of singing, buzzing noises; when
twigs and branches begin to fall and rattle on my cap and saddle;
when weeds and dead grass are snipped off short beside me; when
every mud puddle is starred and splashed; when whack! smack! whack!
on the stones come flights of these things you hear about, and
hear, and never see. And--it scares me.

"But I'm trying to figure out that, first, I am safer if I do what
my superiors tell me to do; second, that it's a dog's life anyway;
third, that it's good enough for me, so why run away from it?

"Some day some of these Johnnies will scare me so that I'll start
after them. There's no fury like a man thoroughly frightened.

"Nobody has yet been hurt in any of the lancer regiments except one
of Rush's men, who got tangled up in the woods and wounded himself
with his own lance.

"Oh, these lances! And oh, the cavalry! And, alas! a general who
doesn't know how to use his cavalry.

"No sooner does a cavalry regiment arrive than, bang! it's split up
into troops--a troop to escort General A., another to gallop after
General B., another to sit around headquarters while General C.
dozes after dinner! And, if it's not split up, it's detailed
bodily on some fool's job instead of being packed off under a line
officer to find out what is happening just beyond the end of the
commander's nose.

"The visitors like to see us drill--like to see us charge, red
pennons flying, lances at rest. I like to see Rush's Lancers, too.
But, all the same, sometimes when we go riding gaily down the road,
some of those dingy, sunburnt Western regiments who have been too
busy fighting to black their shoes line up along the road and
repeat, monotonously:

"'Who-ever-saw-a-dead-cavalryman?'

"It isn't what they say, Ailsa, it's the expression of their dirty
faces that turns me red, sometimes, and sometimes incites me to
wild mirth.

"I'm writing this squatted under my 'tente d'abri.' General
McClellan, with a pr