fence of fortified places, I wonder? And what call you that? Look now,
here is a regular hexagon," continued Henry, making lines upon the
gravel walk with a stick, "here is the bastion,--these lines are the
flank,--the face,--the gorge: here is the curtain. Now, my first
parallel is around here, six hundred paces from the counterscarp. But I
could have taken Charleston myself in half the time that poking fellow,
Clinton, did it, if I had been there, and one of his side, which--thank
my stars--I am not."

"You are entirely out of my depth, brother," interrupted Mildred.

"I know I am. How should women be expected to understand these matters?
Go to your knitting, sister: you can't teach me."

"Have you studied the Military Catechism, Henry? that, you know, Baron
Steuben requires of all the young officers."

"Most," replied Henry. "Not quite through it. I hate this getting prose
by heart. Shakspeare is more to my mind than Baron Steuben. But I will
tell you what I like, sister: I like the management of the horse. I can
passage, and lunge, and change feet, and throw upon the haunches, with
e'er a man in Amherst or Albemarle either, may be."

"You told me you had practised firing from your saddle."

"To be sure I did: and look here," replied the cadet, taking off his cap
and showing a hole in the cloth. "Do you see that, Mildred? I flung the
cap into the air, and put a ball through it before it fell--at a
gallop."

"Well done, master; you come on bravely!"

"And another thing I have to tell you, which, perhaps, Mildred, you will
laugh to hear:--I have taken to a rough way of sleeping. I want to
harden myself; so, I fling a blanket on the floor and stretch out on
it--and sleep like--"

"Like what, good brother; you are posed for a comparison."

"Like the sleeping beauty, sister."

"Ha! ha! that's a most incongruous and impertinent simile!"

"Well, like a Trojan, or a woodman, or a dragoon, or like Stephen
Foster, and that is as far as sleeping can go. I have a notion of trying
it in the woods one of these nights--if I can get Stephen to go along."

"Why not try it alone?"

"Why it's a sort of an awkward thing to be entirely by one's self in the
woods, the livelong night--it is lonesome, you know, sister; and, to
tell the truth, I almost suspect I am a little afraid of ghosts."

"Indeed! and you a man! That's a strange fear for a young Coriolanus.
Suppose you should get into the wars, and should happen to be p