At intervals he imagined that it was Ailsa seated behind him, her arms around his waist, her breath cool and fragrant on his neck; and still he knew she was a phantom born of fever, and dared not speak--became sly, pretending he did not know her lest the spell break and she vanish into thin air again.
What the little sister said was becoming to him only a pretty confusion of soft sounds; at moments he was too deaf to hear her voice at all; then he heard it and still believed it to be Ailsa who was speaking; then, for a, few seconds, reality cleared his clouded senses; he heard the steady thunder of the cannonade, the steady clattering splash of his squadron; felt the hot, dry wind scorching his stiffened cheek and scalp where the wound burned and throbbed under a clotted bandage.
When the regiment halted to fill canteens the little sister washed and re-bandaged his face and head.
It was a ragged slash running from the left ear across the cheek-bone and eyebrow into the hair above the temple--a deep, swollen, angry wound.
"What _were_ you doing when you got this ?" she asked in soft consternation, making him as comfortable as possible with the scanty resources of her medical satchel.

Later, when the bugles sounded, she came back from somewhere down the line, suffered him to lift her up behind him, settled herself, slipped both arms confidently around his waist, and said: "So you are the soldier who took the Confederate battle flag?
Why didn't you tell me?
Ah--I know.

The bravest never tell." "There is nothing to tell," he replied.

"They captured a guidon from us.

It evens the affair." She said, after a moment's thought; "It speaks well for a man to have his comrades praise him as yours praise you." "You mean the trooper Burgess," he said wearily.