Pollard and Kilgariff rode on until the camp was reached. There Kilgariff pushed his horse at once to the tent of the surgeon, and delivered the girl into that officer’s keeping. “Quick!” he said. “I fear she is terribly wounded.” “No, no,” cried the girl; “I am not hurt. It is only that my corsage is—what you call stricken. Is it that that is the word? No? Then what shall I say? It is only that the bullet hurt what you call my stays. Truly it did not touch me.” Just then Captain Pollard observed that Kilgariff’s left hand was wrapped in a piece torn from the front of the girl’s gown, and that the rude bandage was saturated with blood. Contrary to all military rule, the sergeant-major had been holding his reins in his right hand, and carrying the girl in the support of his left arm. This awkwardness, as he was at pains to explain to the captain, had been brought about by the hurry of necessity. “I grabbed the girl,” he explained, “without a thought of anything but the danger to her. The house timbers were already falling, and there was no time to be lost. When I got to my horse, the fire of the sharp-shooters was too severe to be trifled with when I had a girl to protect, so I mounted from the right side of my horse instead of the left, and continued to ride with her on my left arm and my bridle-rein in my right hand. I make my apologies, Captain.” “Oh, confound your apologies!” ejaculated Captain Pollard. “What’s the matter with your left hand? Let the surgeon see it at once.” “It is nothing of consequence,” answered the young man, stripping off the rudely improvised bandage. “Only the ends of a finger or two carried away. I had thought until a moment ago that the bullet had penetrated the young lady’s body. You see, Captain, I was holding her in front of me and clasping her closely around the waist with my fingers extended, the better to hold her in her uncertain seat on the withers. So, when the bullet struck my fingers, I thought it had pierced her person. Thank God, she has come off safe! But by the time the surgeon is through with his work on my fingers, I shall have to use my right hand on the bridle for a considerable time to come, Captain.” “You will have to go to the hospital,” said the surgeon. “Indeed I shall do nothing of the kind.” “Why not, Kilgariff?” asked Pollard, who had become mightily interested in the strange and strangely reserved young man whom he had made his sergeant-major. “Why not? Why, because I’m not going to miss the greatest and probably the last campaign of the greatest war of all time.”