The first year of the great struggle, ah, me! I was young then, and the wild blood was in my veins. I was broad of shoulder and long of limb, with a hand that gripped like steel and a seat in the saddle that was the envy of all that hard-riding country. I was hardy and skilled in all the outdoor sports and pastimes of my race and people, and being light in the saddle I often led the hardest riders and won from them the brush, while every creek for fifty miles up and down the broad Chesapeake, and even the farther shore as far as Baltimore, knew my canoe, and the High Sheriff himself was no finer shot than I. You, who bask in the sunshine of long and dreary years of peace, who never hear the note of the bugle nor see the flash of the foeman's steel from one year's end to another, know not what it was to live in those stirring times and all the joy of the strife. You should have seen us then, when the whole land was aflame. The fiery signal had come like a rush of the wind from the north, with the cry of the dying on the roadsides and fields of Lexington. All along the western shore the men of Anne Arundel, of Frederick, and Prince George were mustering fast and strong. Then the Kentish men and those of Queen Anne and all the lower shore were mounting fast and mustering, while from the Howard hills came riding down bold and hardy yeomen. Then, and as it has always been in the old province of Maryland, the gentlemen led the people, and everywhere the spirit of fire ran like molten steel through the veins of the gathering hosts, and the people took up the gauntlet of war with a laugh and a cheer and shook their clenched hands at the King who was over the sea; so it was the length and breadth of the province, and so it was with me. And so one day the signal came, and I mounted my black colt Toby and rode away to the Head of Elk in the county of Cecil, where the mustering was, to take my place, as it was my duty and right to do, side by side with the bravest gentlemen of the province in the coming struggle for the Great Cause. I was eighteen in the month of March of that year and considered myself a man, and, having reached man's estate, I bade good-bye to my mother and rode from out the sheltering walls and groves of Fairlee. But just before I rode within the shadow of the great woods I turned in my saddle and waved my hand to the small, quaint figure that stood on the broad porch watching me disappear; and she bravely--for the women were brave in those days--waved her hand in return, and then I rode on, for the moment saddened at the parting, for the die that day would be cast, and, though there would be mustering and drilling for many weeks before we took up our march to the northward, the hand of the cause would claim me as its own. I was riding thus through the forest when I heard hoof-beats behind me and a cheery halloo, and who should ride up but Dick Ringgold of Hunting Field, a lad of my own age and my true friend?