Page:Nurse and spy in the Union Army.djvu/238

218 I began now to think that I was about as safe inside the rebel lines as anywhere, for their bullets seemed quite harmless so far as I was personally concerned. I remembered that when I was a child, I heard my mother once tell a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman she was afraid I would meet with some violent death, for I was always in some unheard of mischief, such as riding the wildest colt on the farm, firing off my father's shot-gun, and climbing to the highest point of the buildings. To which the good old predestinarian replied: "Ah weel, my guid woman, dinna fret; it is an auld saying, an' I believe a true one, 'A wean that's born to be hung 'ill ne'er be droon'd.' "Then turning to me and laying his hand on my head, he Baid: "But, me wee lassie, ye mauna tempt Providence wi' your madcap antics, or ye may no live oot half your days." I did not know after all but that the fates were reserving me for a more exulted death on the scaffold at Richmond—for the old minister's words would occasionally ring in my ears: "If the wean is born to be hung it will ne'er be droon'd"—and, I added, or be shot either. I was now outside of the rebel lines, but I was just between two fires, and tremendous hot ones at that, for the whole lines were a perfect blaze both of musketry and artillery. Nothing but the power of the Almighty could have shielded me from such a storm of shot and shell, and brought me through unscathed. It seems to me