We lifted like a flock of great birds away from the Training Center toward the roof above, and then swept away. We moved across the parkland, looking down on the trees and bridle paths, and then finally across the thorn hedge wall that marked the edge of wild country. At first it did not look greatly different, but then we passed over a herd of broom-tails, our noise and shadows frightening them and sending them careening over the grassland.

Mr. Marechal led the way and Mr. Pizarro brought up the rear with the carrier. We buzzed along in about the same relation to the roof, the ground rising and falling beneath us. With the ground in small hills covered by scrub and occasional trees, and the grassland behind us, we set down at a signal from Mr. Marechal.

When the dogs were released from the carrier, they yapped and strained at their leads, but Mr. Pizarro simply tied them up. We put guards around immediately and then started to make camp. We had just about time to gather wood and set up fires before the great lights in the roof began to fade, the air currents to die, and the temperature to fall. The temperature didn’t fall far, but the fire was not for that — it was for cooking and for security.

After dinner, everybody gathered around the fire, including Mr. Pizarro and Mr. Marechal, and I was privileged to give my Campfire Entertainment. For Jimmy’s sake, I forbore the pennywhistle and instead told the story that I had prepared and had intended to tell. It’s an old, old story called “The Lady of Carlisle.”

I waited until everybody was quiet. I stood in front of the sitting people in the wavering light of the fire and began:

This happened a long time ago in a place called Carlisle where they had wild lions. Tigers, as you know, stick to themselves, but these lions lived together in bunches and terrorized the country.

There was a lady living in Carlisle without a bit of family who had been filled with strange ideas by her long-dead mama. She was very beautiful and courted by all the bachelors in the district, who reckoned her a great prize on account of her looks and her money. However, her mama had taught her that to be beautiful was to be special and therefore she shouldn’t throw herself away on the first, or even the second, young man who came along. She should wait instead for a man of good family, wealth, honor and courage. “Test ’em,” her mama said.

Now since her papa had made a fortune selling stale bread crumbs…

“Oh, come on, Mia,” somebody said. “Who’d want to buy stale bread crumbs?”

“I’ll tell you exactly, Stu,” I said. “It was to children to make trails behind them when they went into the woods so they could find their way out again.”

Anyway, her papa had left her enough money that she could afford to sit year after year waiting for her regular Sunday afternoons and her suitors to come calling. She always disqualified them, however, if not on one ground then on another. She spent a good many years this way, sitting in her parlor getting odder and odder, and having great fun turning down suitors on Sunday afternoons. In time, there wasn’t a single eligible man in forty miles that she hadn’t said “no” to at least once. In fact, it finally got so that when a stranger was in town on a Sunday afternoon, the local fellows would send him out to be turned down. The town was small and this provided them with at least one consistent amusement.

Finally, however, it happened that on one particular Sunday there were two young men drinking in town. One was a lieutenant with a plumed hat and a fancy coat with several shiny medals. The other was a sea captain who had sailed around the world no less than three times, for all that he was young. Both were of quite unexceptionable families, were more than full in the pocket, were men of honor and had medals or other testimony to their courage — and both were single. They were, in point of fact, by a good margin the two likeliest candidates that had ever been in Carlisle. The local fellows didn’t even try to choose between them. They simply laid the situation straight out, and both young men had drunk enough to find the idea appealing as well as a quite sensible method of settling the ageold rivalry between the Army and the Navy. So they went off to pay court.

They found the lady at home and quite disposed to receive them. In fact, it put her in quite a flutter. And she turned out to be, even after all these years, as fine looking a woman as either of these well-traveled young men had ever seen. She, on her side, found them both to be exactly the sort of men that her mother had told her to watch and wait for, for she quizzed them quite closely. That they had both shown up on the very same day, however, gave her quite a problem to resolve, and she finally determined to settle it by her mama’s method. “I will set you both a test,” she said, “and the man that passes it will be the man I wed.”

She had a span, which means a pair, of horses and a carriage brought around, and they all climbed in. The young bloods who had sent them in were all waiting in the yard and they followed the carriage down the road, sporting and making bets. The carriage went over the hill and down the road, and in time it came to the den of those lions that had been offending the local people, and there the fair young lady brought the horses to a stop. She’d no sooner done that than she fell rigid to the ground. They picked her up and dusted her off, but she didn’t say a word to anybody for upwards of a quarter hour. The two young fellows asked the local boys about that and they were told that it was the sort of thing she was likely to do from time to time.

“Well, what happened to her?”

“That’s the way the original story goes,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it meant that she was a hysteric.”

“Now, hush,” somebody said, “and let her get on with it.”

When the lady came to her senses again, after a manner of speaking, she threw her fan down in the den amongst the lions. That stirred them up, as you can imagine, and they began growling and prowling around. Then, quite satisfied with herself, the young lady said, “Now which of you gentlemen will win my hand by returning my fan to me?”

That really got the local boys to laying bets. The two young men looked down at the lions’ den and then at her, back and forth, mulling the situation over and trying to come to a good, fair decision. Finally the lieutenant, who deserved every one of the medals he wore but who’d been taught a thing or two about good sense by his own mama, shook his head and said he thought he’d go back to town and have another pint of beer. He walked off down the road muttering under his breath about women and their silly notions.

Then everybody looked at the sea captain, wondering what he would do. Finally he took off his coat so that it wouldn’t get mussed, straightened his collar so that he would look at his best in spite of not being dressed properly, and said, “I’ll do it.” And he climbed down to the entrance to the lions’ den. There were some who said that he had more courage than brains, and there were some who said he’d just had too much to drink. In any case, he disappeared inside the den, and there wasn’t anybody who thought he’d ever come back out again.

They strained to see, but it was dark inside the den. They could hear the lions grumbling among themselves. And then the sea captain emerged, looking slightly rumpled, with the fan in his hand.

Well, when the lady saw him coming, she said, “Here I am,” and prepared to throw herself into his arms.

The sea captain just looked her in the eye and said, “If you want your fan, you can get it yourself,” and threw it back to the lions.

Then he walked back to town and stood the lieutenant the price of a beer, after which each of them went his own way. I don’t know if the lady ever got her fan back.