darts of their sarcasm home to the feelings of their hostile
guests, who were forced to submit to it or forego entirely the
pleasures of female society.

"May I ask if Company K has been on duty at the picket-lines to-day?"
asked Miss Elliott of Captain Fraser, who had just sauntered up to her
chair.

"May I answer the question after the fashion of my ancestors," was the
reply, "by asking why you should think so?"

"Only because you seem to be suffering from fatigue, which a long
march might explain."

Fraser's company was notoriously a "fancy corps," whose severest duty
was generally to furnish the guard at head-quarters and to go through
a dress parade every evening at the Battery.

"Ah, no, but I have been on inspection duty, and it's a bore, I assure
you."

"Inspecting the flower-gardens, I presume, to be sure that there are
no rattlesnakes under the rose-bushes, or the milliner-shops, to see
that no palmetto cockades are made. May I insist upon a seat for you?
Not _that_ chair," she added hastily and with heightened color as the
captain was about to occupy the mutilated _fauteuil_: "excuse me, but
that is a 'reserved seat.'"

"Ah, I see--beg pardon," said Fraser with a slight sneer, for
the story of Washington's flag was generally known, and also Miss
Elliott's aversion to the use of the chair by any British officer.
"Somebody seems to have carried off the back of that one."

"When last heard from," said the beauty with curling lip, "it was at
Colonel Tarleton's back."

"Tarleton should be court-martialed for that affair at Cowpens," said
Fraser with some warmth, and forgetting the proffered seat he prepared
to take his leave.

"Perhaps Captain Fraser would like to have had a hand in the 'affair'
also," added Miss Elliott with a demure smile. This allusion to
Tarleton's wound was too much for the gallant captain, and again
elevating the point of his queue toward the ceiling, but this time
without his hand to his heart, he left the room with a face somewhat
redder than his uniform.

III.

There are defeats which are more glorious than victory, and one
of these it was which, on the 8th of September, 1781, gave to Jane
Elliott's flag the title which has come down with it to posterity. In
the earlier days of its history the saucy little standard was known to
the gallant men who followed it to action as "Tarleton's Terror," and
sometimes it is even now spoken of as "the Cowpens Banner." But the