ress," said the officer who had first spoken to her;
"I am he. What do you wish?"

Betty, too exhausted to be surprised, poured forth her story in a few
broken sentences, and (hearing as if in a dream the hasty commands for
the rescue of the soldiers in Chichester Meeting-house) fell forward in
her saddle, and, for the first time in her life, fainted, worn out by
her noble ride.

A few days later, when recovering from the shock of her long and
eventful ride, Betty, awaking from a deep sleep, found her mother
kneeling beside her little bed, while her father talked with General
Washington himself beside the fireplace; and it was the proudest and
happiest moment of her life when Washington, coming forward and taking
her by the hand, said, "You are the bravest little maid in America, and
an honor to your country."

Still the peaceful meeting-house and the gambrel-roofed home stand
unchanged, save that their time-beaten timbers and crumbling bricks have
taken on a more sombre tinge, and under the broad walnut-tree another
little Betty sits and sews.

If you ask it, she will take down the great key from its nail, and
swinging back the new doors of the meeting-house, will show you the old
worm-eaten ones inside, which, pierced through and through with bullet-holes,
once served as a rampart against the enemy. And she will tell you, in the
quaint Friend's language, how her great-great-grandmother carried, over a
hundred years ago, the news of the danger of her countrymen to Washington,
on the Brandywine, and at the risk of her own life saved theirs.

384

Some two decades ago thousands were reading
about the highly romantic career of Charles
Brandon in _When Knighthood Was in Flower_
(1898), and other thousands were applauding
Julia Marlowe's impersonation of the beautiful
and fascinating Princess Mary in the dramatic
version of that book. The author was Charles
Major (1856-1913), an Indiana lawyer turned
novelist, who wrote, also, the equally romantic
story of _Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall_
(1902). Between these two pieces of delightful
romance, he wrote a series of sketches of
pioneer life in Indiana under the title of _The
Bears of Blue River_ (1901). It is an account
of boy life in the early days, full of dramatic
interest, simply written, and entirely worthy
of the high plac