ace replied, with
characteristic promptness. "I come to report to you as a Colonel. I
come to take orders as such."

General Boyle consulted with his Adjutant-General, and the result was
_a request_ that General Wallace would proceed to Lexington with his
command. Here was exhibited the ready, self-sacrificing spirit of
a true patriot: he did not stand and wait until he could find the
position to which his high rank entitled him, but stepped into the
place where he could best and quickest serve his country in her hour
of peril.

While Wallace was still at the railway-station, he received an order
from General Boyle, putting him in command of all the forces in
Lexington. Here was a golden opportunity for our young commander. What
higher honor could be coveted than to relieve the brave Morgan,
pent up as he was with his little army in the mountain-gorges of the
Cumberland? The idea fired the soul of Wallace, and he pushed on to
Lexington. But here he was sadly disappointed. He found the forces
waiting there inadequate to the task: instead of an army, there were
only three regiments. He telegraphed for more troops. Indiana and Ohio
responded promptly and nobly. In three days he received and brigaded
nine regiments and started them toward the Gap.

No one but an experienced soldier, one who has indeed tried it, can
conceive of the labor involved in such an undertaking. The material in
his hands was, to say the best of it, magnificently _raw_. Officers,
from colonels to corporals, brave though they might be as lions, knew
literally nothing of military affairs. The men had not learned even to
load their guns. Companies had to be led, like little children, by
the hand as it were, into their places in line of battle. There was
no cavalry, no artillery. It happened, however, that guns, horses, and
supplies intended for Morgan at the Gap were in depot at Lexington.
Then Wallace began to catch a glimpse of dawn through the dark tangle
of the wilderness. Some kind of order, prompt and immediate, must be
forced out of this chaos; and it came, for the master-spirit was there
to arrange and compel. He mounted several hundred men, giving them
rifles instead of sabres. He manned new guns, procuring harness and
ammunition for them from Louisville. Where there were no caissons, he
supplied wagons. But his regiments were not his sole reliance; he is
a believer in riflemen, a fighting class of which Kentucky was full.
These he summoned