It was an old high bridge, over a stream sufficiently deep and rocky, and as the mare Daisy with her double load was crossing this bridge, Miss Nora, giving a loose to her imagination, and still harping on the military theme (I would lay a wager that she was thinking of Captain Quin)--Miss Nora said, 'Suppose now, Redmond, you, who are such a hero, was passing over the bridge, and the inimy on the other side ?' 'I'd draw my sword, and cut my way through them.' 'What, with me on the pillion?
Would you kill poor me ?' (This young lady was perpetually speaking of 'poor me!') 'Well, then, I'll tell you what I'd do.

I'd jump Daisy into the river, and swim you both across, where no enemy could follow us.' 'Jump twenty feet! you wouldn't dare to do any such thing on Daisy.
There's the Captain's horse, Black George, I've heard say that Captain Qui--' She never finished the word, for, maddened by the continual recurrence of that odious monosyllable, I shouted to her to 'hold tight by my waist,' and, giving Daisy the spur, in a minute sprang with Nora over the parapet into the deep water below.

I don't know why, now--whether it was I wanted to drown myself and Nora, or to perform an act that even Captain Quin should crane at, or whether I fancied that the enemy actually was in front of us, I can't tell now; but over I went.

The horse sank over his head, the girl screamed as she sank and screamed as she rose, and I landed her, half fainting, on the shore, where we were soon found by my uncle's people, who returned on hearing the screams.

I went home, and was ill speedily of a fever, which kept me to my bed for six weeks; and I quitted my couch prodigiously increased in stature, and, at the same time, still more violently in love than I had been even before.