"Give _me_ the line, then!" she cried. He was past reasoning, beyond surprise, stunned by the clamors and succumbing to wounds. The next moment, the three great horses in a leash, Madcap led his wildest chase across that stricken plain, now shying aside as some wounded man lifted a ghastly face almost beneath his hoofs, or pitifully sought to crawl away like a maimed and dying beast. The thunder of the frenzied gallop shook the ground; the group of men, for whom the rescue was designed, turned a startled and amazed gaze as the horses came on abreast, snorting and neighing and with tossing manes and wild eyes, rushing like the steeds of Automedon. "The gallant little game-cock!" exclaimed Jim Fisher, eying the supposed horse-holder from beside the smoking guns of his battery in the distance. "Now, I'm glad to spare him if never another man goes clear!" For the Confederate cavalry were starting out in pursuit, and to let the squadrons pass without danger the cannonade was discontinued. The bugle's mandate, "Cease firing!" rose lilting into the air, and there was sudden silence among the guns. As Captain Fisher disengaged the strap of his field-glass seeking to adjust it, he noted that there was something continually flying out at the side of the young soldier's saddle. One glance through the magnifying lenses at the floating folds of the riding-habit and the radiant face crowned by the purple plume--and Jim Fisher almost fell under the wheel of the limber as it was run up to the gun-carriage. "My God, Watt!" he exclaimed to his first lieutenant who was also his brother, "that--that--cavalryman is--is Sister Millie!" When she was at last with them, for in tumultuous agitation they had rushed forward to meet her, beckoning and shouting, and their kisses had smeared the gunpowder from their grim countenances to her lovely roseate cheeks, they began to experience the reactionary effects of their fright and scolded her with great rancor, declaring repeatedly they felt much disposed, even yet, to slap her. All of which had no effect at all on Millie Fisher. They tried æsthetic methods of reducing her to see her deed from their standpoint. "I thought you were a patriotic girl, Sister," one of them urged. "And see, now--you have helped three Yankees to escape!" "I _am_ patriotic--more patriotic than anybody," she asseverated. "But I forgot they were Yankees--they were just three men in great danger!" "But _you_ were in great danger, Sister, I--I--might have shot you!" "Didn't you feel funny when you found out who 'twas?" she queried with a giggle of great zest. "I felt mighty funny," said Jim Fisher, grimly. "I suppose few men have ever felt so funny!"