"Oh, Miss Fisher!" remonstrated the gay young lieutenant, perceiving her drift; "how can you consign me so heartlessly to six red-handed Rebels!" "Only red-headed as yet, fiery,--_all_ of them! They'll be red-handed enough after you and they come to blows!" This mimic warfare had a certain zest, and many were the youths among the officers of the garrison who liked to "talk politics" in this vein with "Sister Millie," as she was often designated in jocose allusion to the five fiery-haired brothers. And indeed, as the Fisher family was so numerously represented in the Confederate army, she considered that her Southern partisanship was thus comprehensively demonstrated, and she felt peculiarly at liberty to make merry with the enemy if the enemy would be merry in turn. Very merry and good-natured the enemy was pleased to be as far as she was concerned. They wrote home for social credentials. They secured introductions from brother-officers who had the entrée, and especially courted for this purpose were two elderly colonels who had been classmates of her father's at West Point, where he was educated, although he had resigned from the army many years ago. The two had sought and naturally had found a cordial welcome at the home of his wife, sister, and mother. It was natural, too, that they should feel and exert a sort of prudential care of the household, in the midst of inimical soldiers, and although their ancient companion-in-arms was in an adverse force hardly fifty miles away, they regarded this as merely the political aspect of the situation, which did not diminish their amity and bore no relation to their personal sentiment, as they came and went in his house on the footing of friends of the family. Now and again the incongruity was brought home to them by some audacity of Mildred Fisher's. "If you should meet papa, Colonel Monette," she said one day as one of these elderly officers was going out to command a scouting expedition--"if you _should_ meet papa, don't fail to reintroduce yourself, and give him our prettiest compliments." The elderly officer was a literal-minded campaigner, and as he put his foot in the stirrup he felt rather dolorously that if ever he did meet Guy Fisher again, it would probably be at point-blank range where one would have to swallow the other's pistol ball.