The Cure’s suspicions were aroused, and at his suggestion, an inquiry was made, when it was discovered that the youthful soldier had no right to the masculine vestments she wore.  Don Carlos, who was told of the affair, desired that she should be sent as a nurse to the hospital of Durango, and, when he visited the establishment, presented the fair Amazon with a military cross of merit.  The poor girl was delighted with the decoration, and besought the “King” to allow her to return to the regiment, as she said she was more accustomed to inflicting wounds than to healing them.  In fact, she so implored to be permitted to serve once more as a soldier, that at last, Don Carlos, to extricate himself from the difficulty, said, “No, I cannot allow you to join a regiment of men; but when I form a battalion of women, I promise, upon my honour, that you shall be named the Colonel.”

“It will never happen,” said the girl, and she burst into tears as the King left the hospital.

At Haddon Hall may still be seen “Dorothy Vernon’s Door,” whence the heiress of Haddon stole out one moonlight night to join her lover.  The story generally told is that, while her elder sister, the affianced bride of Sir Thomas Stanley, second son of the Earl of Derby, was made much of in her recognised attachment, Dorothy, on the other hand, was not only kept in the background, but every obstacle was thrown in her way against a connection she had formed with John Manners, son of the Earl of Rutland.  But “something of the wild bird,” it is said, “was noticed in Dorothy, and she was closely watched, kept almost a prisoner, and could only beat her wings against the bars that confined her.”  This kind of surveillance went on for some time, but did not check the young lady’s infatuation for her lover, and it was not long before the young couple contrived to see one another.  Disguised as a woodman, John Manners lurked of a day in the woods round Haddon for several weeks, obtaining now and then a stolen glance, a hurried word, or a pressure of the hand from the fair Dorothy.

At length, however, an opportunity arrived which enabled Dorothy to carry out the plan which had been suggested to her by John Manners.  It so happened that a grand ball was given at Haddon Hall, to celebrate the approaching marriage of the elder daughter, and, whilst a throng of guests filled the ball-room, where the stringed minstrels played old dances in the Minstrels’ Gallery, and the horns blew low, everyone being too busy with his own interests and pleasures to attend to those of another, the young Miss Dorothy stole away unobserved from the ball-room, “passed out of the door, which is now one of the most interesting parts of this historic pile of buildings, and crossed the terrace to where, at the “ladies’ steps,” she could dimly discern figures hiding in the shadow of the trees.  Another moment, and she was in her lover’s arms.  Horses were waiting, and Dorothy was soon riding away with her lover through