In the following campaign she had the ill-luck to be taken prisoner by the French, and was sent to St. Germains en Laye, where Mary of Modena, the wife of James II. paid particular attention to the wants of the English prisoners, having them separated from the Dutch, and allowing each man five farthings for tobacco, a pound of bread, and a pint of wine daily. She was imprisoned for nine days, when an exchange of prisoners took place, and she was released. Once more the troops went into winter quarters, and Mrs. Welch must needs ape the gallantry of her comrades. She made fierce love to the daughter of a rich burgher, and succeeded so well that the girl would fain have married her. Now it so happened that a sergeant of the same regiment loved the same girl, but with other than honourable intentions, and one day he endeavoured to gain her compliance by force. The girl resisted and in the scuffle got nearly all the clothes torn off her back. When Mrs. Welch heard of this affair she ‘went for’ that sergeant, and the result was a duel with swords. Mrs. Welch received two wounds in her right arm, but she nearly killed the sergeant, and afterwards, dreading his animosity when he should have recovered, she exchanged into a dragoon regiment (Lord John Hayes) and was present at the taking of Namur. When the troops again went into winter quarters a curious adventure befell her, which goes to prove how completely masculine was her appearance. She resisted the advances of a woman, who thereby was so angered that she swore she would be revenged, and accordingly, when a child was born to her, she swore that the trooper, Christopher Welch, was its father. This, of course, could have been easily disproved, but then good-bye to her hopes of meeting with her husband; so, after mature deliberation, she accepted the paternity of the child, who, however, did not trouble her for long, as it died in a month. After the peace of Ryswick in 1697, the army was partially disbanded, and Mrs. Welch returned home to Dublin. She found her mother, children, and friends all well, but finding that she was unrecognized, owing to her dress and the hardships of campaigning, she did not make herself known, but re-enlisted in 1701 in her old regiment of dragoons, on the breaking out of the War of Succession. She went through the campaigns of 1702 and 1703, and was present at many of the engagements therein, receiving a wound in the hip, at Donawert, and, although attended by three surgeons, her sex was not discovered. She never forgot her quest, but all her inquiries after her husband were in vain. Yet she unexpectedly came upon him, after the battle of Hochstadt in 1704, caressing and toying with a Dutch camp-follower. A little time afterwards she discovered herself to him. Having seen what she had, she would not return to her husband as his wife, but passed as a long-lost brother, and they met frequently.