Every day after roll-call the captain sent a delegation to the Hutsons’ house to ask after the battery’s child. Every day when we drilled at the guns the little girl herself came in her barbaric costume to see what she called her “shooties,” meaning the cannoneers. We had to part with our little girl presently, we being under orders, and she stationed. As we moved away from the station on our flat cars, she stood upon the platform, and waved “her kind of a flag” at us, crying, throwing kisses, and calling out: “Good-by, you good shooties.” I think the morals of the battery were distinctly better after this little episode. TWENTY-ONE After the battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, as we called it, the region north of Fairfax Court House was a No-man’s land. Little by little we occupied it during that summer, even to Mason’s and Munson’s hills. But the process of occupation was slow. When we pressed forward immediately after the battle all that region was _terra incognita_. About half the people inhabiting it were loyal to one side; about half to the other. So in asking information we had to be circumspect. But we had assurance that the Hopes were loyal to our side. So when Lieutenant Billy Wilds was sent out with a party of us, on scouting duty, he naturally went to the Hope mansion for information. He got it in abundance. Charlotte Hope, the daughter of the house, came out to give it to us, and she was very enthusiastic. She was a brunette, full of life, full of health, and full of enthusiasm for the cause. Besides, she knew how to sit gracefully on a rail fence. She had a rich contralto voice that had narrowly escaped being a bass. She was beautiful to her finger tips. She “had a way with her” that was fascinating beyond belief. As she sat there on the rail fence, explaining the geography of the region round about, we all fell in love with her as troopers should, so far at least as to be ready to do any conceivable deed of derring-do in her behalf. But Lieutenant Wilds fell in love with her in fuller fashion, as was afterwards made manifest. She sat there on the fence curled up most entrancingly and expounded the geography of the country with great minuteness. But when she tried to tell us just where a certain strong Federal post was, which we very much wanted to attack, she grew impatient of words. Turning to a negro boy she said: “Saddle Saladin. I’ll go and show them.” Three minutes later she was in the saddle. Half an hour afterwards Charlie Irving, our captain who had joined us and taken command, gently ordered her to the rear. As I have related in another book of reminiscences she refused to obey. She said: “I believe you are going to charge those fellows, and I want to see the fun.” Well, she saw the fun. We made the charge. At the end of it Lieutenant Wilds was more in love with her than ever. As we escorted her back to her home she broke into song. Her song was the old English ballad which begins:--