“These patriots,” went on the young Liberty Girl, “were the farmers and yeomanry of that State, who, in a vigorous protest against the tyrannous acts, misrule, and extortion during the administration of Governor Tryon, banded themselves into a company known as the Regulators. This bell was used to call them together in their struggle to maintain the rights of the people. These Regulators were not only hounded, persecuted, and sometimes executed as if they were rebels, but many of their number were killed at the battle of the Alamance,—so named because it took place on a field near that beautiful river,—when called upon to defend themselves, when fired upon by the governor and a company of the king’s troops. This battle has been called by some the first battle of the Revolution,” continued the young girl, “and really inspired the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, the forerunner of the noted Declaration signed at Philadelphia. Some historians claim that ‘God made the flower of freedom grow out of the turf that covered these men’s graves.’” After this little story, the inscription, “And well these men maintained the right; They kept the faith and fought the fight; Till Might and Reason both Fled fast before the oath Which brought the God of Freedom’s battles down To place on patriot’s brow the victor’s crown!”[3] on the float was eagerly read and doubly appreciated. By the bell stood a tiny maid in the long skirt of the days of colonial childhood, wearing a long white apron. With the crossed kerchief and two bright eyes peeping from beneath the golden curls that strayed from below the little one’s Puritan cap, she looked so sweet and demure that murmurs of admiration surged through the crowd, as they recognized that this diminutive lady represented the first white child born in America, little Virginia Dare. Perhaps only a few knew that the white fawn that she was holding by her side featured the legend of the white doe that was said to haunt the isle of Roanoke for many years after the return of John White, who found only the word _Croatan_ to tell him that his dear little granddaughter had disappeared, never to be found. The legend was so suggestive of the romance of North Carolina that the girls could not forbear giving it prominence on the float. They had had some trouble to find a white doe, but they had succeeded, and as Nathalie gazed at it she was again reminded of how the legend told that it used to stand mournfully gazing out to sea, on a hill of the little isle. The Indians, tradition asserted, had failed to kill it, until one day it was shot and killed by a silver bullet from the hand of an Indian chieftain, who claimed that the bullet had been given to him by Queen Elizabeth to kill witches, when a captive in England. As the beautiful doe sank upon the green sward and expired it was said to have murmured, “Virginia Dare! Virginia Dare!”