Chapter IV: Part 4

Baillie did not perfectly understand the purpose of this, but he understood his orders, and very promptly obeyed them. Advancing his guns quickly to a little knoll thirty or forty yards in front, he opened fire with double charges of canister, each gun firing at the rate of three or four times a minute, and each vomiting a gallon of iron balls at each discharge into the faces of a line of men not a hundred yards away. At the same moment the riflemen of the skirmish-line rose to their feet, rushed forward with a yell that impressed Baillie as truly demoniacal, and delivered a murderous volley of Minie balls in aid of his canister. The combined fire was irresistible, as it was meant to be, and the Federal skirmishers fell back in some confusion in face of it.

Then the cool-headed leader of the skirmishers turned to Baillie and commanded:

"Now be quick. Take your guns across the creek at once. They'll be on us again in a minute with reinforcements, but I'll hold them back till you get the guns across--"

He had not finished his order when he fell, with a bullet in his brain, and his men, picking him up, laid him limply across his horse, which two of them hurried to the rear, passing within ten feet of Baillie Pegram as he struggled to get his guns across the run without wetting his ammunition.

"Poor, gallant fellow!" thought Baillie, as the corpse was borne past him. "He was only a captain, but he would have made himself a major-general presently, with his coolness and his determination. He died too soon!"

Meanwhile Baillie was busy executing the order that the dead man had given with his last breath, while some other was in command out there in front and struggling to protect the guns till they could pass the stream.

It is always so in life. No man is indispensable. When one man falls at the post of duty, there is always some other to take his place. "Men may come and men may go," but the work that men were born to do "goes on for ever."

As Baillie was directing the struggles of his drivers in the difficult task of recrossing the stream, three shells burst over him in so quick a succession that he did not know from which of them came the fragment that cut a great gash in his head and rendered him for the moment senseless. He recovered himself quickly, and this was fortunate, for his untrained and inexperienced men were far less steady in retreat under fire than they had been out there in front, and Baillie's direction was needed now to prevent them from abandoning in panic the guns with which they had fought so gallantly a few minutes before.

Under his sharply given commands they recovered their morale, and a few minutes later Baillie brought his powder-grimed guns again into position on the left of the battery. Then, half-blinded by the blood that was flowing freely over his face and clothing, he sought his captain, raised his hand in salute, and said, feebly:

"Captain, I beg to report that I have executed my orders. My men have behaved well, every--"

A heavy musketry fire from the enemy at that moment began, and Baillie Pegram's horse--the beautiful sorrel mare on which Agatha had once ridden--sank under him, in that strange, limp way in which a horse falls when killed instantly by a bullet received in any vital part.

By good fortune the sergeant-major was not caught under the animal, but as he tried to walk toward the new mount which he had asked for, he staggered and fell, much as the mare had done, but from a different cause. Complete unconsciousness had overtaken him, as a consequence of the shock of his wound and the resultant loss of blood.

When he came to consciousness again, he was lying on the grass under a tree, with a young surgeon kneeling beside him, busy with bandages. For a time his consciousness did not extend beyond his immediate surroundings and the terrific aching of his head. Presently the heavy firing which seemed to be all about him, and the zip, zip, zip of bullets as they struck the earth under the hospital tree brought him to a realisation of the fact that battle was raging there, and that he, somehow,--he could not make out how,--was absent from his post with the guns. He made a sudden effort to rise, but instantly fell back again, unconscious.

When he next came to himself there was a sound as of thousands of yelling demons in his ears, which he presently made out to be the "rebel yell" issuing from multitudinous throats. There were hoof-beats all about him, too, the hoof-beats of a thousand horses moving at full speed. Excited by these sounds, wondering and anxiously apprehensive, he made another effort to rise, but was promptly restrained by the strong but gentle hands of an attendant, who said to him, with more of good sense than grammar:

"Lay still. It's all right, and it's all over. We've licked 'em, and they's a-runnin' like mad. The horsemen what passed us was Stuart's cavalry, a-goin' after 'em to see that they don't stop too soon."

Stuart was drunk with delight. He shouted to his men, as he rode across Stone Bridge: "Come on, boys! We'll gallop over the long bridge into Washington to-night if some blockhead doesn't stop us with orders, and I reckon we can gallop away from orders!"

Baillie lay still only because the attendant kept a hand upon his chest and so restrained him. As he listened, the firing receded and grew less in volume, except that now and then it burst out in a volley. That was when one of Stuart's squadrons came suddenly upon a mass of their confused and fleeing foes and poured a hailstorm of leaden cones in among them as a suggestion that it was time for them to scatter and resume their run for Washington.

As the turmoil grew less and faded into the distance, Baillie's wits slowly came back to him, and thoughts of himself returned.

"Where am I?" was his first question.

"Under a hospital tree on the battle-field of Manassas," answered the nurse. "You're about two hundred yards in the rear of the position where your battery has been covering itself with glory all day. It's gone now to help in the pursuit. But it's had it hot and heavy all day, judging from the sloppings over."

"The 'sloppings over?' What do you mean?"

"Why, the bullets and shells and things that didn't get theirselves stopped, like, on the lines, but come botherin' over here by this hospital tree. Two of 'em hit wounded men, an' finally, just at the last, you know, the doctor got his comeuppance."

"Was he wounded?"

"Wuss 'n that. He war killed, jes' like a ordinary soldier. That's why you're still a-layin' here, an' here you'll lay, I reckon, all night, for they ain't nobody left to give no orders, 'ceptin' me, an' I ain't nothin' but a detail. But I'm a-goin' to git you somethin' to eat ef I kin. They's another hospital jest over the hill, an' mebbe they've got somethin' to eat, an' mebbe they's a spare surgeon there, too. Anyhow I'm a-goin' to do the best I kin fer you an' the rest."

"How many of us are there?" asked Baillie.

"Only four now--not enough for them to bother about, I s'pose they'll say, specially sence two on 'em is clean bound to die, anyhow. All the slightly wounded has been carried away to a reg'lar hospital. That's their game, I reckon--to take good keer o' the fellers that's a-goin' to git well, so as to make complaints ef they don't, an' leave the rest what can't live to make no complaints to die where they is."

Baillie was too weak, and still too muddled in his intelligence, to disabuse the mountaineer's mind of this misconception. It is only ordinary justice to say that his interpretation was utterly wrong. There was never a more heroic set of men than the surgeons who ministered on the battle-fields of the Civil War to the wounded on one side or on the other. At the beginning, their department was utterly unorganised, and scarcely at all equipped, either with material appliances or with capable human help in the way of nurses, litter-bearers, or ambulance-men. They did the best they could. When battle was on, they hung yellow flags from trees as near the firing-line as possible, and these flags were respected by both sides, so far as intentional firing upon them was concerned. But located as they were, just in the rear of the fighters, these field-hospitals were constantly under a heavy fire, aimed not at them, but at the fighting-line in front, and it was under such a fire that the young surgeons did their difficult and very delicate work. The tying of an artery was often interfered with by the bursting of a shell which half-buried both patient and surgeon in loose earth. It was the duty of these field-surgeons to do only so much as might be immediately necessary--to put their patients as quickly as possible into a condition in which it was reasonably safe to send them, in ambulances or upon litters, to some better-equipped hospital in the rear. Very naturally and very properly, the surgeons discriminated, in selecting wounded men to send to the hospitals, between those who were in condition to be removed, and those to whom removal would mean death, certainly or probably. The mountaineer, who had been detailed as a hospital attendant that day, did not understand, and so he misinterpreted.

"Where is my hat?" Baillie Pegram asked, after a period of silence.

"Is it the one with a red feather in it?" responded the attendant.

"Yes."

"Well, it's a good deal the wuss for wear," answered the man, producing the blood-soaked and soil-stained headgear. "I don't think you'll want to wear it again."

But when the headpiece was brought, the young man, with feeble and uncertain fingers, detached the feather and thrust it inside his flannel shirt, leaving the lacerated hat where it had fallen upon the ground.

"Am I badly wounded?" Pegram asked, after a little.

"Well," answered the man, "you've got a good deal more'n I should like to be a-carryin' around with me. But I reckon you'll pull through, perticular ef you kin git to a hospital after a bit."

Just then, as night was falling, a pitiless rain began, and all night long Baillie Pegram lay in a furrow of the field, soaked and suffering. But he removed the feather from its hiding-place, and held it upon his chest, in order that the rain might wash away the blood-stains with which it had been saturated.

When the morning came, and the ambulance with it, the blood-stains were gone and the feather was clean, though its texture was limp, its appearance bedraggled, and much of its original colour had been washed out.

* * * * *

Two or three days later, Agatha Ronald at her home received by mail a package containing a feather, once red but now badly faded. No note or message of any kind accompanied it, but Agatha understood. She had already learned through the newspapers that "Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram, after a desperate encounter with the enemy on the outer lines, had been severely--perhaps mortally--wounded in the head;" and that "Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram has been mentioned in General Orders for his gallant conduct on the field, with a recommendation for promotion, if he recovers from his wounds, as the surgeons give little hope that he will."

She wrapped the faded feather in tissue-paper, deposited it in a jewelled glove-box which had come to her as an heirloom from her mother, and put it away in one of her most sacred depositories.

A week or two later, she learned that Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram had been removed from the general hospital at Richmond to his home at Warlock, and that he was now expected to recover from his wounds.

XI

_AT WARLOCK_

"It's jes' what I done tole you niggas fust off."

That was Sam's comment upon the situation when his master was brought home to Warlock, stretched upon a litter.

"I done tole yer what'd happen when Mas' Baillie go off to de wah in dat way, 'thout Sam to take k'yar of him. An' bar in min' what else I done tole yer, too. Ain't de chinch-bug done et up de wheat, jes' as I tole yer? Now, Mas' Baillie, he's a-gwine to die wid that hole in he haid. Den what's a-gwine to become o' you niggas?"

Sam promptly installed himself as his master's nurse, sitting by him during the day, and sleeping on the floor by his bedside every night. For a time it seemed likely that the negro's dismal prophecy of Baillie's death would be fulfilled, but with rest and the bracing air of his own home, he slowly grew better, until he was able at last to sun himself in the porch or under the trees of the lawn.

He chafed a good deal at first over the fact that he had not seen the major part of the fighting along Bull Run, and it annoyed him still more that he was likely to lose his share in a campaign which was expected to bring the war to a speedy and glorious end. It was Marshall Pollard who laughed him out of this latter regret. During the long waiting-time that followed the battle of Manassas, Marshall, who had gained a lieutenancy in his battery, secured several brief leaves of absence in order to visit the convalescent man at Warlock.

"You're missing nothing whatever, Baillie," he said to him one day, in answer to his querulous complainings. "We're doing nothing out there in front of Washington, and, so far as I can see, we're not likely to do anything for many months to come. When the battle of Manassas ended in such a rout of the enemy as never will happen again, we all expected to push on into Washington, where only a very feeble, resistance or none at all would have been met. When that didn't happen, we confidently expected that the army at Centreville would be reinforced at once with every man who could be hurried to the front, and that General Johnston would push across the Potomac and take Washington in the rear, or capture Baltimore and Philadelphia, and cut Washington off.

"I don't pretend to understand grand strategy, but this was plain common sense, and I suppose that common sense has its part to play in grand strategy, as in everything else. Anyhow, it is certain that that was the time to strike, and if the army at Manassas had been reinforced and pushed across the Potomac while the enemy was so hopelessly demoralised and disintegrated, there is not the smallest doubt in my mind that the war would have come to an end within a month or two. Instead of that, we have done nothing, while the enemy has been straining every nerve to bring new troops into the field by scores of thousands, and to drill and discipline them for the serious work of war. They have done all this so effectually that they now have two or three men to our one, half a dozen guns to our one, and supply departments so perfectly organised that no man in all that host need go without his three good meals a day, while we are kept very nearly in a state of starvation, and are now fortifying at Centreville, like a beaten army, whose chief concern is to defend itself against the danger of capture."

"Have you ever heard an explanation of this strange state of things?" asked Baillie. "You see, I've been out of the way of hearing anything ever since the battle."

"O, yes, I've heard all sorts of explanations. But the real explanation, I think, is the lack of an experienced general, capable of grasping the situation and turning it to account. Neither in the field nor in authority at Richmond, have we a man who ever commanded an army, or even looked on while a great campaign was in progress. General Johnston and General Beauregard are doubtless very capable officers in their way. But until this war came, they were mere captains in the engineer corps, engaged in constructing Mississippi levees, and that sort of thing. Neither of them ever in his life commanded a brigade. Neither ever saw a great battle, or had anything to do with an army composed of men by scores of thousands.

"Their victory at Manassas simply appalled them. They didn't know at all what to do next. They will probably become good and capable commanders of armies before the war is over, but at present they are only ex-captains of engineers, suddenly thrust into positions for which they have absolutely none of that fitness which comes of experience."

"But have they not learned enough yet? Will they not now see their opportunity, and undertake a fall campaign?"

"No. The opportunity is entirely gone. The Federal army is to-day much stronger in every way than our own. We have pottered away the months that should have been spent in vigorous and decisive action. The only man in our army capable of seeing and seizing such an opportunity and turning it to account--I mean Robert E. Lee--has been kept in the mountains of Western Virginia, engaged in settling wretched little disputes among a lot of incapable, cantankerous political brigadiers. It means a long war and a terrible one, Baillie, and you'll have opportunity to do all the fighting you want before it is over. But nothing of any consequence will be done this fall."

The young lieutenant was quite right in his prophecy. Except for a little contest at Drainesville--amounting to scarcely more than a skirmish--there was absolutely nothing done until the 21st of October. Then occurred the small, badly ordered and strategically meaningless battle of Leesburg, or Ball's Bluff, when the Federals were again completely defeated. After that came a long autumn of superb campaigning weather, and a tedious winter of complete inaction. Federal expeditions besieged some of the forts and islands along the Carolina coasts, thus preparing the way for a coast campaign which was never made in earnest.

There was fighting of some consequence in Kentucky and Missouri, and as the winter waned, General Grant made his important campaign against the forts on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, breaking the Confederate line of defence in that quarter, and pushing it southward. But in Virginia, the natural battle-field, absolutely nothing was done during all those months of weary waiting.

For this strange and strangely prolonged pause in a war which had begun with a rush and a hurrah, history has been puzzled to find an explanation. It is true that the Confederate forces were untrained volunteers, whose endurance and discipline could not have been relied upon in an aggressive campaign to anything like the extent to which Lee afterward depended upon the unflinching endurance and unfaltering courage of these same men. But the Federal army was at that time in much worse condition. To unfamiliarity with war and to complete lack of discipline in that army, there was added the demoralisation of disastrous defeat and panic. General McClellan said in his official capacity, and with carefully chosen words, that when he was placed in control in August, he found "no army to command,--a mere collection of regiments cowering on the banks of the Potomac, some perfectly raw, others dispirited by recent defeat, some going home." He completed his description of the situation by saying: "There were no defensive works on the southern approaches to the capital. Washington was crowded with straggling officers and men absent from their stations without authority."

Why the Confederates, with their great victory to urge them on, made no effort to take advantage of such conditions, but lay still instead, giving McClellan many months in which to recruit and organise and drill his forces into one of the most formidable armies of modern times, is one of the puzzles of history. Perhaps Marshall Pollard's suggestion was the correct explanation,--namely, that there was no general at Manassas who knew what to do with a great opportunity, or how to do it.

Seeing that Baillie was becoming excited by this serious talk, his friend adroitly turned the conversation to less strenuous matters. Half an hour later The Oaks ladies drove up in their antique, high-hung carriage, to make that formal inquiry concerning Mr. Baillie Pegram's convalescence which from the first they had made with great scrupulousness three times every week.

When they had gone, Pollard asked:

"Have you seen Miss Agatha since that day last spring, when you were requested not to visit The Oaks?"

For a moment Baillie remained silent. Then he said: "If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk of that, Marshall."

That was all that passed between these two on that subject during the week of Marshall's stay at Warlock. How unlike men are to women in these things! Had these two young men been two young women instead, how minutely each would have confided to the other the last detail of experience and thought and feeling! And this not because women are more emotional than men--for they are not--but because they are not ashamed, as men are, of the tenderer side of their natures.

XII

_UNDER ESCORT_

No sooner had Agatha Ronald determined to enter upon a career of very dangerous service to her cause and country, than she set herself diligently to the work of perfecting plans which were at first vague and undefined. It was no part of her purpose to fail if by any forethought and thoroughness of preparation she might avert the danger of failure. She determined to do nothing until every point and possibility, so far as conditions could be foreseen, should be considered and provided for.

First of all, she entered into perfect confidence with her maid, Martha, telling the trusty negro woman as she meant to tell no other person near her, except her grandfather, precisely what she intended to do, and how. Martha had a shrewd intelligence likely to be useful in emergencies, and her devotion to her mistress was as absolute as that of any devotee to an object of worship. This mistress had been hers to care for by night and by day ever since Agatha had been four years of age. All of loyalty, all of affection, all of self-sacrificing devotion of which the negro character in its best estate is capable, she gave to Agatha, never doubting her due or questioning her right to such service of the heart and soul. She knew no other love than this, no other life than that of unceasing, all-embracing care for her mistress.

It was with no shadow of doubt or hesitation, therefore, that Agatha revealed her purposes to Martha, and asked for her aid in carrying them out. And Martha received the somewhat startling confidence as calmly as if her mistress had been telling her of an intended afternoon drive.

When matters had settled down into apathetic idleness after the battle of Manassas, Agatha made occasion to visit the army. Officers at Fairfax Court-house had their wives and daughters with them at their headquarters then, and many of these were Agatha's intimates, whom she might visit without formal invitation.

At their quarters, she received visits from such of her friends as belonged to the cavalry forces stationed thereabouts. In her intercourse with these, she steadily maintained the innocent little fiction that she was there solely for social purposes, and to see the splendid army that had so recently won an astonishing victory.

One day, she learned that the picturesque cavalier, General J. E. B. Stuart, had boldly pushed his outposts to Mason's and Munson's Hills, and established his headquarters under a tree, within easy sight of Washington. She instantly developed an intense desire to visit him there. It happened that she knew Stuart and his family personally, and had often dined in the great cavalry leader's company at her own and other homes. So she said one day, to a young cavalry officer, who was calling upon her:

"I want you to do me a very great service. I want you to ask General Stuart to let me visit him at the outposts. He'll offer to come here to call upon me instead, for he is always gallant, but you are to tell him I will not permit that. The service needs him at the front, and I want to visit him there. Besides, I particularly want to take a peep at Washington City in its new guise as a foreign capital which we are besieging."

The young man remonstrated. He protested that there was very great danger in the attempt--that raids from the picket-lines were of daily occurrence, that the firing was often severe--and all the rest of it, wherefore General Stuart would almost certainly forbid the young lady's proposed enterprise.

The girl calmly looked the young man in the eyes--he was an old friend whom she had known from her childhood--and said, very solemnly:

"Charlie, I am no more afraid of bullets than you are. My heart is set upon this visit, and you _must_ arrange it for me. As for General Stuart, I'll manage him, if you'll carry a note to him for me."

That young man had once begun to make love to Agatha, and she had checked him gently and affectionately in time to spare his pride, and to make of him her willing knight for all time to come. So he answered promptly:

"I'll carry your note, of course, and if Stuart gives permission, I'll beg to be myself your escort. Then, if anybody bothers you with bullets or anything else, it'll be a good deal the worse for him."

The girl thanked him in a way that would have made a hero of him in her defence had occasion served, and presently she scribbled a little note and placed it in the young cavalryman's hands for delivery. It was simple enough, but it was so worded as to make sure that Stuart would promptly grant its request. It ran as follows:

"MY DEAR GENERAL STUART:--I very much want to see you for half an
hour out where you are, at Mason's or Munson's Hill, and not here
at Fairfax Court-house. My visit will be absolutely and entirely in
the public interest, though to all others than yourself I am
pretending that it is prompted solely by the whim of a romantic
young girl. Please send a permit at once, and please permit
Lieutenant Fauntleroy, who bears this, to be my escort."

The note was unsealed, of course, except by the honour of the gentleman who bore it. Stuart's response was prompt, as every act of his enthusiastic life was sure to be. He read the note, held a corner of the sheet in the blaze of his camp-fire, and retained his hold upon the farther corner of it until it was quite consumed. Then he dropped the charred sheets into the coals, and turning to Lieutenant Fauntleroy, commanded:

"Return at once to Fairfax Court-house, detail an escort of half a dozen good men under your own personal command, and escort Miss Ronald to my headquarters. Be very careful not to place the young lady under fire if you can avoid it. Ride in the woods, or under other cover, wherever you can. Remember, you will have a lady in charge, and must take no risks."

"At what time shall I report with Miss Ronald?"

"At her time--at whatever time she shall fix upon as most pleasing to her."

Thus it came about that before noon of the next day, in the midst of a pouring rain-storm, General Stuart lifted Agatha Ronald from her saddle, taking her by the waist for that purpose. He welcomed her with a kiss upon her brow, as the daughter of a house whose hospitality he had often enjoyed. He quickly escorted her to a little brush shelter which he had made his men hastily construct as a defence for her against the rain, and ordered the sentries posted full fifty yards away, in order that the conversation might by no chance be overheard.

"It is a splendid service," he said, when the girl had finished telling him of her plans. "But it will be attended by extraordinary danger to a young woman like you."

"I have considered all that, General," she replied, very seriously. "I do not shrink from the danger."

"Of course not. You are a woman, a Virginian, and a Ronald,--three sufficient guarantees of courage. But I'm afraid for you. It is a terrible risk you are going to take--immeasurably greater in the case of a woman than in that of a man."

"I have my wits, General,--and this," showing him a tiny revolver. "With that a woman can always defend her honour."

"You mean by suicide?"

"Yes--if necessity compels." Stuart looked at the gentle girl, gazing into her fawn-like brown eyes as if trying to read her soul in their depths. Presently he said:

"God bless you and keep you, dear! I'm going to ride back to Fairfax Court-house with you. Make yourself as comfortable as you can here for half an hour, while I ride out to the pickets. I'll be with you soon, and then we'll have dinner, for you are my guest to-day."

When the dinner was served, it consisted of some ears of corn, plucked from a neighbouring field, and roasted with husks unremoved, among the live coals of the cavalier's camp-fire. Stuart made no apology for the lack of variety in the meal, for he sincerely accepted the doctrine which he often preached to his men, that "anything edible makes a good enough dinner if you are hungry, and the simpler it is, the better. There's nothing more troublesome in a campaign than cooking utensils and unnecessary things generally. If armies would move without them, there'd be more and better fighting done. The chief thing in war is to start at once and get there without delay."

The meal over, Stuart held out his hand as a step, from which Agatha lightly sprang into her saddle. Then he mounted the superb gray, which he always rode when battle was on, or when he had a gentlewoman under his charge. For there was a touch of the boyish dandy in Stuart, and a good deal more than a touch of that gallantry which prompts every true man of warm blood to honour womanhood with every possible attention.

The horse was fit for his rider, and that is saying quite all that can be said in praise of a horse. Mounted upon him, Stuart was the bodily presentment of all that painters and sculptors have imagined the typical cavalier to be or to seem. Stalwart of figure, erect in carriage, his muscles showing themselves in graceful strength with every movement of his body, his head carried like that of a boy or a young bull, his beard closely clipped, his moustache standing out straight at the ends, and resembling that of Virginia's earliest knight errant, Captain John Smith, of Jamestown, Stuart was a picture to look upon, which the onlooker did not soon forget. His many-gabled slouch hat was decorated with streaming plumes, that helped to make of him a target for the enemy's sharpest sharpshooters whenever battle was on. Full of vigour, full of health, and full to the very lips of a boyish enthusiasm of life, he seemed never to know what weariness might signify, and never for one moment to abate the intensity of his purpose. He did all things as if all had been part of a great game in which he was playing for a championship.

On this occasion, however, his manner was subdued, and his conversation serious in a degree unusual to one of his effervescent spirits. He was riding with Agatha Ronald for the very serious purpose of talking with her about details that must be carefully arranged with a view to her safety in the dangerous undertaking upon which she was about to enter. A word or two to Lieutenant Fauntleroy sent that officer with his escort squad to the front, while Stuart and his charge rode in rear.

"Now, one thing more is necessary, Miss Agatha," he said. "You ought to reënter our country far to the west, if you can, where there are no armies, and only small detachments. Still, I don't know so well about that. Here we keep the Yankees too busy at the front to attend to matters in the rear, while over in the valley they'll have nothing better to do than look out for wandering women like you. Anyhow, you may find it necessary or advisable to enter my lines. In that case, you must be arrested immediately and brought to my headquarters. That is necessary on all accounts--to prevent the nature of your mission from being discovered, and--well, to prevent you from having to report to anybody but me. I shall want to see you, and hear all about your results. So I'm going to give orders every day that will put every picket-officer on watch for you, and impress every one of them with the idea that you are a peculiarly dangerous person, in league with traitors on our side, and trying to put yourself into communication with such. I cannot give you any sort of paper, you see, for papers are always dangerous. But I'll give you six words that will answer the purpose. Whenever you speak the right one of these words with emphasis, the picket-officer will understand that you are the very dangerous spy whose entrance into our lines I anticipate, and whose arrest I particularly desire to secure. I'll give out one of the six words each day, particularly charging officers of the pickets that any woman entering our lines by any means, and using that word with emphasis, is the spy I want,--that her use of it will be intended for the purpose of finding traitorous friends, and that any such woman, no matter upon what pretext she enters the lines, is to be arrested as soon as she uses the word. Only one of these words will be given out each day, but you will know them all, and use them in succession until you use the right one and are arrested. The words will be such as you can embody in an ordinary sentence without exciting the suspicion of any of the men who may be standing by,--for, of course, only officers will be commissioned to arrest you. You can use the words in different sentences, until you use the right one. Then you will be arrested and brought to my headquarters, where I hope to have a better dinner than that of to-day to offer you."

Just at that moment, the road along which they were riding passed between two abandoned fields, each of which was skirted by woodlands on its farther side. Stuart raised his head like a startled deer, and said:

"We must quit the road here, and put ourselves behind that skirt of timber over on the left. Your horse will take the fence easily."

With that the pair pushed their animals over the rail fence on the left, and at a gallop rode across the field toward a little strip of young chestnut woodland that lay beyond. But just as they reached the centre of the field there came the zip, zip, zip of bullets striking the earth, the whiz of bullets passing their ears, and the weird whistle of bullets passing over them, one of which, now and then, turned somersaults in its course, and produced the peculiar sound that only bullets so misbehaving are capable of producing. At the same moment, the escort under Lieutenant Fauntleroy, who had been in front, fell back to protect its charge, as it was its duty to do. Stuart hurriedly said to the girl:

"Ride for your life to the chestnut-trees, and hide yourself there, while I take care of those fellows. I'll come to you when it's over."

With that he turned about, placed himself at the head of the little escort squad, and, swinging his sabre, as he always did in action, led them at a furious pace, over a fence and into the thicket from which the fire was coming. The few men who were lurking there were quickly scattered, and abandoning their arms, they ran with all their might to the strong picket-post from which they had been thrown out to intercept him.

This done, all danger of further trouble was at an end, or would have been, had Stuart willed it so. But the scent of battle was always in his nostrils. His men were accustomed to say that he was always "looking for trouble," whenever there was the smallest chance of finding it. So instead of contenting himself with having dispersed the assailing party, he wheeled about to the right, and led his squad with the fury of Mameluke against the strong picket-post itself. Amid a hailstorm of bullets he charged through the half-company there posted, and then, turning about, charged back again, completing the work of destruction and dispersal.

It was not until this was over, and he had given the command, "Trot," that he saw Agatha by his side, her pistol in hand and empty of its charges, her hair loosened and falling in tangled masses over her shoulders, her face aglow, and her lithe form as erect as that of any trooper among them all.

"But my dear Miss Ronald," Stuart ejaculated, "what are you doing here?"

"Riding under gallant escort, General, that is all."

"But I ordered you to take refuge in the timber."

"Yes, I know," she answered, with a laughing challenge in her eyes, "but as I have never been mustered in, I'm not subject to your orders. You can't court-martial me, can you, General?"

Stuart looked at her before answering--his eyes full of an admiration that was dimmed by glad tears. At last he leaned over, kissed her again upon the forehead, and said, impressively:

"What a wife you'll make for a soldier some day!"

XIII

_A SOUVENIR SERVICE_

During the rest of the journey Agatha was excited and full of enthusiasm. She had participated in a fight under the lead of the gallantest of cavaliers, and she had borne herself under fire in a way that had won his admiration. That admiration found expression in a hundred ways, and chiefly in pressing offers of service. Before their parting he said to her:

"Now, my dear Miss Agatha, you really must let me do you some favour. I want to cherish the memory of this day's glorious ride, and I want to render you some service, the memory of which may serve as a souvenir. What shall it be?"

At that moment there came to Agatha's mind one of those inspirations that come to all of us at times, quite without consciousness of whence they come or why. She answered:

"You are already doing everything for me, General. You have sanctioned an enterprise on which I have set my heart, and you have done all you could to make it successful. You gave me for dinner to-day the very best ear of green corn that I ever tasted. You have personally and very gallantly escorted me back here to Fairfax Court-house, and on the way you have got up for me the most dramatic bit of action that I ever saw. I am convinced that you did it only for my entertainment, and I am truly grateful." Then with a sudden access of intense seriousness, she added, "And you have opened a way to me to render that service to my country which I had planned. Never, so long as you live,--and I hope that may be long for Virginia's sake,--will you know or imagine how great a service you have rendered me in this. But you insist upon doing more. You insist that I shall crave a boon at your hands. Very well; I will do so."

With that readiness of response which characterised everything that Stuart did, he seized the opportunity offered, and broke into Agatha's sentence with the answer:

"Of course I insist. What is it that I may do?"

"I want you to secure a captain's commission, then, for Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram. You know all about his family. He volunteered as a private. He was promoted to be sergeant-major by Stonewall Jackson's own request, in recognition of his good conduct. He was terribly wounded at Manassas, mentioned in general orders, and strongly recommended for promotion for gallantry on the field. My aunts write to me--" here Agatha fibbed a little, as a woman is permitted to do under circumstances that might otherwise compromise her dignity, for it was not her aunts, but a highly intelligent negro maid in their service who kept the young lady informed as to Baillie Pegram's condition--"my aunts tell me he is getting well again, and will soon be ready for duty."

"What is his arm?" asked Stuart, eagerly.

"Light artillery," Agatha answered.

"Has he influence?"

"How do you mean?"

"Could he get men to enlist?"

"Why, of course. He's the master of Warlock, you know."

Then with a little touch of embarrassment, she added, "I mean he is the head of one of the great families, and they always have influence."

"O, yes, of course," Stuart answered. "I see the situation clearly. Will you say to Mr. Pegram--Sergeant-Major Pegram, I mean--that I have authority from the War Department to raise three companies of flying artillery, with the men all mounted, to serve with the cavalry, and that if he can form such a company,--of fifty or seventy-five men, or better still a hundred men--I will secure him a captain's commission with authority to do so?"

"But, General," said the girl, quickly, and in manifest fright, "I do not correspond with Mr. Pegram. In fact we are _very nearly strangers_."

"O, I see," answered the cavalier, with a twinkle in his eyes. "How long has it been since you and this gallant young gentleman arranged to be 'very nearly strangers?'"

"O, you entirely mistake, General," the girl quickly answered. "Really and truly I never knew Mr. Pegram very well; but he wore a red feather of mine at the battle of Manassas, and afterward he sent it back to me and--well, anyhow he proved his gallantry and he really ought to be something more than a sergeant-major, don't you think?"

For answer Stuart made a sweeping bow, removing his hat and saying: "Concerning Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram, I think whatever you think. Anyhow, as he had the good taste to wear your red feather, and as he has fought well enough to secure a wound and a mention in general orders and your personal approval, he shall be a captain if he wants to be. Give me his address, and you need not have any correspondence with him."

"I'll write it," she answered, "if you'll excuse me for a moment," and with that she retired within doors--for they had been standing in the porch--in a rage of vexation with herself. She hastily sponged off her inflamed face with cold water, dried it, and loosely twisted up her errant hair, which had run riot over her neck and shoulders ever since the little encounter with the enemy. Then she scribbled Baillie Pegram's Warlock address on a scrap of paper and returned to Stuart's presence, with the mien and bearing of a queen.

The cavalier's face was rippling all over with smiles as he bade her adieu, wished her Godspeed in her enterprise, and turned away. At the steps he faced about, and advancing said to her:

"When do you wish to return to Fauquier?"

"I shall go home to-morrow morning," she answered.

"You travel in your own carriage, of course?"

"Yes, and my maid is with me."

"Very well," he answered. "At sunrise a platoon under command of a trusty officer will report here and serve as your escort."

"But, General, surely that is not necessary."

"Not necessary, perhaps," was the answer, "but it pleases me to have it so, and you'll indulge my fancy, I am sure. I hope to have you as my prisoner before many moons have passed."

She understood, and with a rippling smile she replied:

"Thank you, and good-bye. I shall certainly enjoy my next ear of green corn if I am permitted to take it in your company, under some tree that you have honoured by making it your headquarters."

"O, my ravenous cavalrymen will have eaten up all the green corn long before that time; but I'll give you a dinner if I have to raid a Federal picket-post to get it."

With that he sprang into his saddle, waved a farewell, and rode away singing:

"If you want to have a good time,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cavalry,
If you want to have a good time,
Jine the cavalry,
Jine the cav-al-ry."

It was Stuart's boast at that time that he knew the face and name of every man in his old first regiment, and he afterward extended this boast to include all the men in the first brigade of Virginia Cavalry. He used to say: "I ought to remember those fellows; they made me a major-general."

But however well Stuart knew his men, with whom he fraternised in a way very unusual to most officers bred in the regular army, as he had been, nobody ever pretended to know him well enough to guess with any accuracy what he would do next under any given circumstances. On this occasion he had not brought his staff with him, but that made small difference with an officer of his temper, whose habit of mind it was to disregard forms and ceremonies, and to go straight to his purpose, whatever it might happen to be. When he left Agatha, he rode at once to the camp of a detached company and asked for its captain. To him he said:

"Send couriers to all the cavalry camps, and say that General Stuart orders the entire force to report in front at once."

He designated three roads and four bridle-paths by which the commands were to move; and three or four points of rendezvous. Then he added:

"Let the men move light--no baggage or blankets or anything else but arms and ammunition."

A moment later he met Colonel Fitzhugh Lee, who had succeeded him in command of the old first regiment,--"my Mamelukes," as Stuart loved to call them. The two grasped hands, and Stuart said: "I've ordered everybody to the front. You are to take command on the left. We must drive the Federal pickets back from all their advanced posts. They are growing impudent. They fired at a lady under my personal escort to-day. We must teach them not to repeat that."

Of course the men who had done the firing in question had no means of knowing that there was a woman among the assailed, and Stuart knew the fact very well. But he chose to regard whatever happened as something intended.

Turning from Lee, he galloped to the camp of some batteries, and said to the officer in command:

"I wish you'd lend me a couple of guns or so for the afternoon. I've some work to do. Send them out along the Falls Church road. I'll not have to go borrowing guns after a little while. I'll have some mounted batteries of my own."

The officer addressed issued the necessary orders as quietly as a gentleman in his own house might bid a servant bring a glass of water for a thirsty guest. No questions were asked on either side, and no explanations offered. It is not the military fashion to ask unnecessary questions or to give needless explanations.

By this time the cavalry regiments were streaming by on their hurried way to the front, saluting Stuart as they passed, and now and then cheering, as they were apt to do when they saw their gallant leader. He in his turn nodded and bowed in acknowledgment, and now and then called out a cheery word of greeting. He would be at the head of all these fellows presently, and they knew that "the performance would not begin," as they were in the habit of saying, till he should be there to lead. But meanwhile he had something else to attend to, for Stuart never forgot anything that he wanted to remember, however engrossingly he might be engaged with other affairs. Riding up to a tent before which Colonel Field was standing awaiting his horse, he asked:

"Is your adjutant with you, Field?"

"No--he has gone on with orders, but his orderly is here, General."

"That will do as well." Then turning to the orderly, who had appeared, he said:

"Take down a paper from dictation, please. When it is written out, bring it to me at the front for signature."

The dictation was as follows:

"General J. E. B. Stuart, commanding the cavalry, respectfully reports that in pursuance of the authorisation of the War Department, he has selected Sergeant-Major Baillie Pegram, of ----'s battery, as one of the persons to be commissioned captain of artillery and authorised to raise a mounted battery to serve with the cavalry. General Stuart begs to report that Sergeant-Major Pegram's character and qualifications are abundantly certified, and that he has already been mentioned in general orders and recommended for promotion for conspicuous gallantry in the battle of Manassas. He is at present at his home, recovering from a severe wound received in that action. All of which is respectfully submitted."

"There!" said Stuart, when the dictation was done. "Write that out, fold and indorse it properly, and bring it to me at the front for signature. Then forward it through the regular channels."

Then Stuart put spurs to his horse, and galloped to the front. There he made hurried disposition of the various commands, and half an hour later hurled his whole force precipitately upon all the Federal outposts on the ten-mile line. The onset was sudden and resistless, and within a brief while every picket-post of the enemy was abandoned, and a new line of observation established many miles nearer to Washington City.

With that tireless energy and that sleepless vigilance in attention to details which always characterised the conduct of this typical chevalier, Stuart spent the entire night following this day's work in visiting his new outposts, from one end of the line to the other. Yet when morning came he breakfasted upon an ear of raw corn and a laugh, and rode on to Munson's Hill to learn what signals had been received from his agents in Washington during the night.

XIV

_QUICK WORK_

It was a warm, soft day in autumn, joyous in its sunshine, sad in its suggestions of the year's decay. Baillie Pegram, now nearly well again, but still lacking strength, was lolling on the closely clipped sward under one of the great trees at Warlock, chatting disjointedly with Marshall Pollard, who had got away again on a few days' leave of absence, for the purpose of visiting his friend. Baillie had already written to his captain, reporting himself as nearly well again, expressing regret at his long absence from duty, and announcing his purpose of rejoining the battery within a week or ten days at furthest--"at the earliest time," he said, "when I can persuade the surgeons to release me from their clutches." This was likely, therefore, to be the last meeting between the two friends for many moons to come.

"Tell me about yourself, old fellow," said Baillie, after a pause in the conversation. "How do you like your service in that battery of ruffians?"

"Thoroughly well. They're not half-bad fellows when kept under military discipline, and I've enjoyed studying them psychologically. I'm convinced that the only reason society has failed so consummately in its attempts to deal with the criminal class is that it hasn't taken pains to understand them or find out their point of view. We really haven't taken pains enough even to classify them, or to find out the differences there are among them. We class them all together--all who violate the law--and call them criminals, and proceed to deal with them as if they were a totally different species from ourselves, whereas, in point of fact, they are 'men like unto ourselves,' with like passions and desires and impulses. The only real difference is that circumstances and education and association have taught us to curb our passions and hold our impulses in check, while they have run wild, obeying those instincts which are born in all of us.