There she learned minutely what the situation was. With some difficulty
she secured permission to go as a guest to a house near Falls Church, in
Virginia. She had hoped there to find Confederate picket-posts, and to
work her way to some one of them by stealth or strategy, or by boldly
taking risks. She found instead that the nearest Confederate outpost was
at Fairfax Court-house, nine miles away, while the inner Federal lines
lay on the route from Falls Church to Vienna, and stretched both ways
from those points. Stuart was no longer at Mason's and Munson's Hills.
With the approach of winter the Confederates had retired to their
fortified line, and Stuart, with the cavalry, had established himself at
Camp Cooper and other camps, three or four miles in rear of the Fairfax
Court-house line, which now constituted his extreme advance.
Moreover, the Federal army, under McClellan's skilled and vigilant
command, had been completely reorganised, drilled, disciplined, and
converted from the chaotic mass described in his report--quoted in a
former chapter--into an alert and trustworthy army, destined, during
later campaigns, to cover itself with glory. At present, McClellan, who
had no thought of advancing upon Centreville and Manassas, where the
Confederates were strongly fortified, was at any rate manifesting spirit
by continually pressing the Confederate outposts, and now and then
making considerable demonstrations against them.
His inner picket-lines, as already explained, were drawn very near the
house in which Agatha was sojourning. His advanced posts--where the
skirmishing was frequent--were along the Fairfax Court-house line.
Between these two lines lay eight or ten miles of thick and difficult
country, held by the Federals, and scouted over every day, but not
regularly picketed.
Thus, instead of a mile or two of difficulty, Agatha had before her ten
miles of trouble, with a prospect of worse at the end of it.
Time and extraordinary care were necessary to meet these new
difficulties. Agatha's first problem was to find out all she could of
facts, to gather exact and trustworthy information. In this endeavour
she had a shrewdly intelligent co-adjutor in Martha.
By way of avoiding suspicion--for the family with whom she was staying
were known to be strongly Southern in their sympathies, and the Federal
officers had begun to understand the devoted loyalty of the negroes to
the families that owned them--Agatha established Martha in a cabin of
her own a mile or more from the house. There Martha posed as a free
negro woman, who was disposed to make a living for herself by selling
fried chickens, biscuits, and pies to the Federal soldiers on the
interior picket-lines, and a little later to those posted farther in
advance.
Martha was a sagacious as well as a discreet person. At first she showed
a timid reluctance to go farther toward the front than the inner lines
from Falls Church to Vienna. While peddling her wares there, she took
pains to learn all the foot-paths, and the location of all the
picket-posts in that region. Then little by little she allowed herself
to be persuaded to go farther toward the outer lines, for the soldiers
found her fried chicken and her biscuits and her pies particularly
alluring.
It was only after she had mastered both the topography of the country
between, and the exact methods of its military occupation, that she so
far overcame her assumed timidity as to push on with her basket to the
picket-posts immediately in front of Fairfax Court-house itself. She
raised her prices as she went, lest by selling out her stock in trade
she should leave herself no excuse for going to the extreme front at
all. For the same reason she came at last to pass by many posts where
she had formerly had good customers, retaining her wares professedly for
the sake of the higher prices that the men at the front gladly paid for
something better to eat than the contents of their haversacks.
Within a week or two Martha had learned and reported to her mistress
quite all that any officer on either side knew of the country, its
roads, its foot-paths, its difficulties, and the opportunities it
afforded. In the middle of every night, Martha made her way to her
mistress, or her mistress made her way to Martha, until at last, Agatha,
who had directed her inquiries, was equipped with all necessary
information, and ready for her supreme endeavour. It involved much of
danger and incredible difficulty. But the courageous young woman was
prepared to meet both danger and difficulty with an equable mind. She
knew now whither she was going and how, but the journey through a
difficult country must be made wholly on foot and wholly by night.
Agatha was ready for the ordeal. As for Martha, the earth to the very
ends of it held no terrors that could cause even hesitation on her part
in the service of her mistress.
XVI
_CANISTER_
It was a little after midnight when Agatha and her maid, stripped of all
belongings that could impede them on their way, set out on foot upon
their perilous journey. Agatha was deliberately exposing herself to far
worse dangers than any that the soldier is called upon to brave in the
work of war. She could carry little in the way of food, and of course
could not replenish her supplies until she should succeed in entering
the Confederate lines, if indeed that purpose were not hopeless of
accomplishment at all. But the danger of starvation which these
conditions involved, was the very least of the perils she must
encounter. At any moment of her stealthy progress she might be shot by a
sentinel. Far worse than that, she might be seized with her tell-tale
medicines upon her person, while hiding within the forbidden lines of
the enemy. In that case, there would be no question whatever as to her
status in military law, or as to her fate. If she should fall into the
enemy's hands under such circumstances, by forcible capture or even by
voluntary surrender, she must certainly be hanged as a spy. She was
armed against that danger only by the possession of the means of instant
self-destruction,--her little six-shooter.
It was comparatively easy for her to find her way during the first
night, through the slender interior picket-line, and into the forbidden
region that lay between that and the outposts in front. Every roadway
leading toward the Confederate positions was, of course, securely
guarded, and all of them were thus completely closed to Agatha's use.
She must steal through the thickets of underbrush that lay between the
roads, making such progress as she could without at any time placing
herself within sight or hearing of a sentinel. Sometimes this involved
prolonged waiting in constrained positions, and several times she
narrowly missed discovery.
When morning came, the pair of women hid themselves between two logs
that lay in a dense thicket, and there they remained throughout the
daylight hours. There, too, before noon, they consumed the last
fragments of their food.
During the next night they made small progress. They succeeded, indeed,
in crossing a deep and muddy creek that lay in front of them, but it was
only to find themselves confronted by a roadway, which ran athwart their
line of march, and which, on this night, at least, was heavily picketed
and constantly patrolled by scouting squads of cavalry.
Agatha crept on her hands and knees, and quite noiselessly, to a point
from which she could make out the situation, and there the pair remained
in hiding among the weeds and bushes that skirted an old and partially
destroyed fence, until daylight came again.
With the daylight came a considerable thinning of the line of videttes
in front, and toward nightfall, after a day of toilsome crawling back
and forth in search of a way of escape, the two women succeeded in
crossing the road unobserved. After crawling for a hundred yards or so
beyond the road, they hid themselves as securely as they could, and
waited for night to come again.
They were suffering the pangs of excessive hunger and thirst now, and
gnawing roots and twigs by way of appeasing the terrible craving. It was
obvious to Agatha that this night must make an end of her attempt in one
way or another. She must reach the Confederate lines before the coming
of another day, or both she and her companion must perish of hunger, or
surrender themselves and be hanged. She suggested this thought to
Martha, whose only answer was:
"Anyhow, you'se got your pistol, Miss Agatha."
There were still two miles or more to go before reaching the little
patch of briars and young chestnut-trees just in front of the Fairfax
Court-house village, which was Agatha's objective. During her peddling
trips, Martha had learned that Federal sharpshooters were thrown into
this thicket every night, usually between midnight and morning, for the
purpose of annoying the Confederate pickets, stationed not fifty yards
away. She had learned, too, that nearly every morning, about daylight,
the Confederates were accustomed to rid themselves of the annoyance by
sending out a cavalry force to charge the thicket and clear it of its
occupants. It was Agatha's plan to hide herself and her maid there, and
be captured by Stuart's men when they should come.
But she could not enter the bushes until the sharpshooters should be in
position. Otherwise they would be sure to discover her while placing
themselves. As soon as the riflemen had crept to their posts, Agatha,
favoured by the unusual darkness of a thickly clouded night, crept to a
hiding-place just in rear of the men. There she and Martha lay upon the
ground during long hours, well-nigh famished, and suffering severely
from cold, for the autumn was now well advanced.
Unfortunately for Agatha's plan, the Confederates had adopted new
methods for this night. Instead of ordering cavalry to clear the
thicket, they had decided to clear it with canister. Accordingly, a
battery of artillery had been ordered to the front, and bivouacked half
a mile in rear of Fairfax Court-house. Thence just before daylight two
guns had been dragged forward by prolonge ropes, and stationed under the
trees of a little grove about fifty yards in front of the cover from
which the Federal sharpshooters were occasionally firing.
Just at dawn, these two guns suddenly and furiously opened upon the
bushes with canister in double charges.
The effect was terrific. The bushes were mown down as with a scythe, and
it seemed impossible to the two women that any human being should
survive the iron hailstorm for a single minute. The sharpshooters
scurried away precipitately, one of them actually stumbling over
Agatha's prostrate form, which he probably took to be that of some
comrade slain. But Agatha and her maid remained, and the fearful fire
continued. They remained because there was nothing else for them to do.
They could not retreat. They could not surrender. They were starving.
They must go forward or die.
Then the courage and daring of her race came to Agatha's soul, and she
resolved to make a last desperate attempt to save herself, not by
running away from the fire,--which would be worse than useless,--but by
running into it. The danger in doing this was scarcely greater, in fact,
though it seemed so, than that involved in lying still, but it requires
an extraordinary courage for one unarmed and not inspired by the
desperate all-daring spirit of battle, to rush upon guns that are
belching canister in half-gallon charges, at the rate of three or four
times a minute.
The sharpshooters were completely gone now, and nothing lay between the
young woman and her friends except a canister-swept open space fifty
yards in width. This the heroic girl--baffled of all other
resource--determined to dare. Directing Martha to follow her closely,
she rose and in the gray of the dawn ran like a deer toward the
bellowing guns. Fortunately, some one at the guns caught sight of the
fleet-footed pair when they had covered about half the distance, and, in
the increasing light, saw them to be women. Instantly the order, "Cease
firing!" was given, and the clamorous cannon were hushed, but a heavy
musketry fire from the enemy broke forth just as Agatha and her maid
fell exhausted between the guns. A voice of command rang out:
"Pick up those women, quick, and carry them out of the fire!" Half a
dozen of the men responded, and strong arms carried the nearly lifeless
women to a small depression just in rear, where they were screened from
the now slowly slackening shower of bullets.
When the fire had completely ceased, Captain Baillie Pegram ordered his
guns, "By hand to the rear," and rode back to inquire concerning his
captives. It was then that he discovered for the first time who the
fugitives were, and the horror with which he realised what he supposed
to be the situation, set him reeling in his saddle.
He had heard nothing of Agatha's mission to the north, of course. He now
knew only that she had been hiding within the enemy's lines, and only
one interpretation of that fact seemed possible. Agatha Ronald--the
woman he loved, the woman upon whose integrity and Virginianism he would
have staked his life without a second thought--had turned traitor! He
did not pause to ask himself how, in such a case, she had come to be in
the thicket among the sharpshooters. He was too greatly stunned to think
of that, or otherwise to reason clearly.
Nor did he question her, except to ask if she or her maid had been
wounded, and when she assured him of their safety, he said:
"I don't know whether to thank God for that or not. It might have been
better, perhaps, if both had fallen."
Agatha heard the remark, and understood in part at least the thought
that lay behind it. But she did not reply. She only said, feebly:
"We are starving."
"Bring two horses, quickly," Baillie commanded. "Lieutenant Mills, take
the guns back to the bivouac. Our work here is done."
Then turning to Agatha, he explained:
"We have no rations here; can you manage to ride as far as our bivouac?
It is only half a mile away, and we'll find something to eat there."
Agatha's exhaustion was so great that she could scarcely sit up, but she
summoned all her resolution and managed to hold herself in place on the
McClellan saddle which alone was available for her use. Martha was
carried by the men on an improvised litter.
At the bivouac, no food was found except a pone or two of coarse corn
bread and a few slices of uncooked bacon. But the delicate girl and her
maid devoured these almost greedily, eating the bacon raw in soldier
fashion, for, of course, no fires were allowed upon the picket-line.
Food and rest quickly revived Agatha, and Baillie remembered certain
very peremptory orders he had received as to his course of procedure
should "any woman whatever" come into his lines.
"I must escort you presently to a safer place than this," he said.
"Am I to go under _compulsion_, Captain Pegram," the girl asked, "or of
my own _accord_?"
"With that," he answered, "I am afraid I have nothing to do. My sole
concern is to take you out of danger. It is not my business to ask you
questions as to how you have come into danger in a way so peculiar."
"And yet," she replied, "that is a matter that I suppose requires
_inquiry_, and I am ready for the _ordeal_."
The moment she spoke that word, which was the fourth in the series that
Stuart had given her, and the one he had selected as a test for this
day, Baillie Pegram flinched as if he had been struck, while his face
turned white. Hoping that her use of the word had been accidental, or
that the emphasis she had placed upon it had been unintended, he asked:
"What did you say?"
"I said," she responded, very deliberately, "that I am ready for the
_ordeal_."
The look of consternation on Baillie's face deepened. Without replying,
he walked away in an agitation of mind which he felt must be hidden from
others at all costs. Pacing back and forth under screen of some bushes,
he tried to think the matter out. Under his orders, he must arrest
Agatha and take her to Stuart, who had been more than usually anxious,
as Baillie knew, to capture this particular prisoner. But to do that, he
felt, must mean Agatha's disgrace and shameful death, and the staining
of an ancient and honoured name. Yet what else could he do?
"Would to God!" he exclaimed, under his breath, "that my canister had
done its work better!"
Then he fell into silence again, questioning himself in the vain hope of
finding a way through the blind wall of circumstances.
"Agatha," he thought, "has been with the enemy, and has been trying to
get back again in order to render them some further traitorous service.
Stuart has obviously learned all about the conspiracy in which she had
been engaged. That is why he has been so eager for her arrest. That is
how he knew what signal-words she would use in her endeavour to find
some fellow conspirator among us. But why did she use the word to me.
Surely the conspiracy cannot have become so wide-spread among us that
she deemed _me_ a person likely to be engaged in it. Perhaps she spoke
for other ears than mine, hoping to find a traitor among those who stood
by.
"And the worst of it is that I still love her. Knowing her treachery and
her shame, I still cannot change my attitude of mind. What shall I do? I
could turn traitor for her sake. I could manage to secure her escape,
and then give myself up, confess my crime, and accept the shameful death
that it would merit."
For the space of a minute he lingered over this idea of supreme
self-sacrifice with which the devil seemed to be luring him to
destruction. Then he cast it aside, and reproached himself for having
let it enter his mind.
"No love is worth a man's honour," he thought. "A better way would be to
kill her myself, and then commit suicide. No, not that. Suicide is
the coward's way out; and killing her would only reveal and emphasise
her crime."
Just then one of his men approached him, and announced that orders had
come for the battery's return to its camp. Baillie walked back to the
bivouac, and said to his lieutenant:
"Take command and march to the camp at once. I have some personal orders
to execute."
With that promptitude which all men serving under Stuart learned to
regard as one of the cardinal virtues, the lieutenant had the battery
mounted and in motion within a few minutes. Not until it had made the
turn in the road did Baillie approach Agatha. Then he faced her, and
staring with strained and bloodshot eyes into her face, he abruptly
said:
"I love you, Agatha Ronald. In spite of what you have done, that fact
remains. I love you!"
[Illustration: "'_I love you, Agatha Ronald_'"]
"This is neither the time nor place in which to tell me so," she
interrupted. Then, after a brief moment of hesitation, she broke down
and burst into tears. It was only a very few moments before she
controlled herself, and forced herself to speak clearly, though she did
so with manifest difficulty.
"Please forget what you have just said," she began. "I realise your
position. I understand. I think I know what you have been thinking. You
have contemplated a crime for my sake,--the highest crime of all. For my
sake you have been tempted to sacrifice not only your life--which to a
brave man means little--but your honour, which is more precious to a
brave man than all else in the world. Tell me, please, and tell me
quickly, that you have put that temptation aside--that you have utterly
repudiated the horrible thought."
"I have done so certainly," he replied, in a hard voice. "But why do you
care so much for that?"
"Why? Because your honour--all honour--is precious to me, and I could
not respect you if you had consented to the thought of dishonour even in
your mind. I should loathe and detest your soul if for my sake or any
sake you could have done that. No, don't interrupt me, please," seeing
that he was trying to speak, "let me finish. I, too, am under orders,
one of which is to keep my lips sealed. But under such circumstances as
these I may disobey my orders without dishonour. I am not a soldier.
Let me tell you a little, then, so that you may not suffer on my
account. No harm will come to me when you take me, as you must, to
General Stuart. I am here by his own orders, and I was over there,"
motioning toward the enemy's lines, "with his full knowledge and
consent. There. That is all I may tell you."
The strong man turned deathly pale under the shock of the relief that
the young woman's words brought to his mind. For a moment Agatha thought
that he would fall, but recovering himself, he ejaculated, "Thank God!"
and those were the only words he spoke for a space.
He presently ordered the horses brought, and helped Agatha to mount.
"Can you manage to ride a McClellan saddle?" he asked. "There is no
other to be had."
"I suppose not," Agatha answered, with returning spirits. "I suppose the
quartermaster's department does not issue side-saddles to the mounted
artillery for the use of errant damsels whom they capture. But I can do
very well on a cavalry saddle."
XVII
_AT HEADQUARTERS_
Agatha was well-nigh exhausted by the terrible strain she had endured.
She could scarcely sustain herself in the saddle, as she and Baillie set
out, her maid riding a-pillion behind her. She would have liked--if she
had dared risk it--to keep the silence of extreme weariness during the
journey to Stuart's headquarters, two or three miles away, but in fact
she talked incessantly, in a hard, constrained voice, limiting the
conversation strictly to external matters. She asked her companion about
his battery, the number and character of his guns, how many men he might
have under his command, the nature of his duties, and many other things,
chatter about which served as a substitute for the more personal
conversation that she was determined to avoid. She was fencing for
position, and her purpose was plain enough to Baillie Pegram, but at
the end of the ride the girl herself was more inscrutably a riddle to
him than she had been before. For just as they arrived, and when it was
too late for him to say any word in reply, she suddenly turned to him,
and said:
"Before we part, Captain Pegram, I want to thank you for all you have
done for me, and still more for what you have felt--I mean your wish to
save me. I am very grateful, but--"
There she broke off, leaving him to torture himself with almost
maddening conjectures as to what should have followed that bewildering
"but."
At that moment Stuart, who had heard of the capture and was waiting,
came hurriedly from the piazza of his headquarters to greet and welcome
the arriving pair. With strong arms he lifted the girl from her saddle
and placed her on her feet, as he might have done with an infant child.
For he was a giant in strength, and his muscles were as obedient to his
will as were the troopers who so eagerly followed him in every fray.
Seeing the girl's bedraggled condition, and understanding how sorely
shaken her nerves must be, he made no reference to the circumstances of
her coming, but cheerily said:
"I am doubly fortunate, Miss Agatha, in having you again for a visitor,
and in having the ladies of my household with me just now; for God bless
these Virginia women," addressing this part of his remark to Captain
Pegram, "they are always with us when we need them."
With that he hurried Agatha into the house, and placed her in feminine
charge, with orders that she should have food and rest and sleep, and
especially that she should not be annoyed by any questionings until such
time as she should herself desire to speak with him.
"You will remain with us to dinner, Captain Pegram, if you please. There
are matters about which I wish to talk with you."
When the two were left alone, he said:
"Tell me, now, all you know about how Miss Agatha became your
prisoner--the details, I mean."
When Baillie had finished the narrative, expressing wonder that the girl
had passed unharmed through that hailstorm of canister, Stuart said,
simply:
"I'm glad your gun practice was no better."
"So am I," the young man answered.