hose.  So we were ordered up to get the cars out.  Some strikers had concealed themselves in buildings where they could overlook the shed, and while we were working at the door, they kept firing on us.  We were in the light of the blazing shed, and they were in the dark, which gave them a big advantage over us, and we couldn’t spare the time to attend to them.  We tore up some rails and with them smashed in the door.  The men in the cars were screaming, so we knew which to take, and fortunately they were the nearest to the door.  We took our muskets—­for the frames of the cars were blazing, and the metal part too hot to touch—­and fixing bayonets, drove them into the woodwork and so pushed the cars out.  When we were outside, we used the rails again, to smash an opening in the ends of the cars which were burning the least.  We got the men out unharmed, but pretty badly frightened.”

“And were you not hurt?”

“We had eight wounded and a good many badly burned.”

“And you?”

“I had my share of the burn.”

“I wish you would tell me what you did—­not what the others did.”

Peter would have told her anything while she looked like that at him.

“I was in command at that point.  I merely directed things, except taking up the rails.  I happened to know how to get a rail up quickly, without waiting to unscrew the bolts.  I had read it, years before, in a book on railroad construction.  I didn’t think that paragraph would ever help me to save forty lives—­for five minutes’ delay would have been fatal.  The inside of the shed was one sheet of flame.  After we broke the door down, I only stood and superintended the moving of the cars.  The men did the real work.”

“But you said the inside of the shed was a sheet of flame.”

“Yes.  The railroad had to give us all fresh uniforms.  So we made new toggery out of that night’s work.  I’ve heard people say militia are no good.  If they could have stood by me that night, and seen my company working over those blazing cars, in that mass of burning freight, with the roof liable to fall any minute, and the strikers firing every time a man showed himself, I think they would have altered their opinion.”

“Oh,” said Leonore, her eyes flashing with enthusiasm.  “How splendid it is to be a man, and be able to do real things!  I wish I had known about it in Europe.”

“Why?”

“Because the officers were always laughing about our army.  I used to get perfectly wild at them, but I couldn’t say anything in reply.  If I could only have told them about that.”

“Hear the little Frenchwoman talk,” said Watts.

“I’m not French.”

“Yes you are, Dot.”

“I’m all American.  I haven’t a feeling that isn’t all American.  Doesn’t that make me an American, Peter, no matter where I was born?”

“I think you are an American under the law.”

“Am I really?” said Leonore, incredulously.