Another hour's riding, a ten minute's pause to reconnoiter, and I crossed to the other side of the Potomac by a rough and almost impassable ford. Making the top of the rocks which faced the river, I gave my horse time to get his breath, while I sat on a stone beside him. Night and darkness had almost shut in the view on every side. The moon was up but was obscured by clouds except for a moment or two at a time. I could hear the faint swish of the water as it flowed over the stones immediately below, but save for that an intense stillness prevailed.

Rising after a few moments' contemplation of a landscape, which I could but faintly see, I buried my passes and the one other valuable paper I carried under a huge stone. I then felt that I was fairly started on my perilous undertaking. I was on the Virginia side of the river, in a region known to be swarming with Rebels who asked nothing better than to catch a Union spy. I well knew that if I should run across any of them in such a way as to arouse their suspicions my life would not be worth the asking, and I would share the fate of many who had tried before.

As I now had no passes or any way of proving my identity, I also had to guard equally against meeting any of our own troops, for unless I should chance on an acquaintance among them, they would be certain to hold me prisoner. My endeavor was to avoid every one, for a small foraging party or a few belated pickets might prove as disastrous to me as "an army with banners." I had determined that it would be necessary for me to avoid all well-traveled roads and all towns, even the smallest villages, and to make my way through the dense woods when ever I could, taking advantage of such bridle-paths as I could find running in the direction I wanted to go.

Before I had rode many miles I became convinced that a general move toward the Potomac of some sort was going on. Whenever I approached a road I could tell from the sounds that persons were passing along it, not rapidly or in any large sized bodies, but mostly on foot and singly, or in small squads of six or eight. They seemed to be pressing on too steadily for ordinary skulkers, yet in a too "go as you please" style for troops under command.

At last I decided to gratify my curiosity, hoping to gain at the same time some information that would be of use to me.

Some miles back I had struck a path which I had been able to follow. When it again crossed a road, I stopped a few rods back, slipped my horse's bridle over a sapling and made my way to the edge of the road, which, as I soon made out at this point, ran along a sort of gully. On the side I was on the bank was at least four feet above the road, and along the edge of the bank was a rough attempt at a rail-fence pieced out and propped up here and there with stones. I crept noiselessly behind this shelter and waited until two stragglers came along. When nearly opposite me they accosted a third who must have been resting by the roadside.

We all went on together; they on the road and I behind the fence. From their interchange of confidences, scraps of which came up to me, I soon learned that they were Rebels and belonged to Knapp's division, and that in the first advance it had been left behind on the James, but had just crossed the Potomac and gone on to join Luce. The men seemed to be stragglers who had dropped behind from pure physical inability to keep up, and their great anxiety, as well as I could judge from their conversation, was to get there before anybody "fit."

Having learned all I was likely to from them, I retraced my steps and mounted my horse. I had to keep him at a walk, for I was in a rough piece of woods and could not see two feet beyond my horse's head. I had not rode long when I heard faint sounds of musketry in front of me and a little to my left, in exactly the direction I was traveling. I listened intently, and concluded it must be a chance brush between a party of our troops and some of the Rebels.

The firing was directly between where I was and the place where I intended to get breakfast and hoped to get a fresh horse. I did not want to miss stopping there, for it was the only Union man's house I knew of any where near. I could not afford to circle around the fighting, as it might lead me considerably out of my road. A skirmish, even if a small affair, is a very unsatisfactory thing to go around, not being exactly stationary.

I carried an old silver watch which I had procured during my stay in the Capital, but it was too dark to see the time without striking a match, which I did not care to do. I judged from the distance I had come it must be near daybreak. So, anxious as I was to get on, I knew it would be wise to halt until it began to get light and the dispute ahead should be settled.

I tied my horse to a tree and went as far away as I could to be within hearing distance of his movements. As soon as I discovered a log, which I did at last by taking a header over it, I lay down behind it. Though in point of fact I did not know which to call the front or back, considering it as a barrier to an approaching foe.

I was too weary to more than reach a recumbent position before I was asleep. I had been asleep long enough to feel completely chilled from the cold fog when something awoke me. I aroused with a start and a feeling that some one was near me. On the alert at once I waited with baited breath for some further noise to indicate in which direction the disturbance had been, but none came and I finally concluded that I had been mistaken or dreaming.

I went over to look at my horse and make sure that he had not pulled loose. He was where I had left him and had evidently spent his time nibbling off every tender branch in his reach.

I determined to look around before mounting. It was barely daybreak and there was a light fog, which made all excepting near objects indistinct. I made my way through a shallow, dry gully and across a wide flat covered with trees. I knew I must then be near the road which I had been skirting the latter part of my ride, so I paused a moment before advancing further. Hearing nothing I went on around a jutting point of rocks on a thicket-covered slope and stopped at the head of a washout, made by the summer rains.

As I stood listening the ground suddenly gave way with me and I went down a steep bank, to find the road sooner than I expected, and myself in the company of two Rebel soldiers and a broken down army wagon. I found out with a vengeance what had aroused me, and as is sometimes the case with investigators, learned more than was desirable.

The men had evidently been half asleep, when my abrupt appearance brought them to their feet.

A man has to think quickly in moments of danger. I took in the situation at a glance and in the same brief time decided to enter into conversation with them.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Broke down," replied the liveliest looking of the two, while both kept their muskets suggestively convenient and eyed me suspiciously.

The wagon was heavily loaded and the back axle-tree had broken in two, letting down the end. I looked it over because I had nothing better to do. One of the men volunteered the information that it was twice too much of a load.

"You don't expect to sit here with it all day, do you?" I asked, intending to offer to go ahead and find some one to help them right matters as an excuse to get away.

"No," said the man who had not spoken before. "Holly, 'es gone on thar an' 'ell bring back some of our squad to help."

As he spoke, faintly approaching sounds indicated that a "Holly" was coming back with assistance. There was no chance for me to leave and nothing better suggested itself than to act so that whoever came back would think I belonged there. I proposed to the men that we might as well see what we could do while we waited.

When a dingy officer and eight men appeared on the scene, we were all three busy inspecting the damage and no awkward questions were asked. So for a short space of time I served in the Confederate army,—at least I pulled at the wheel of a Confederate army wagon, with a great show of work and no real exertion.

The officer in command, it was impossible to tell his rank from his dress, but as he assumed more airs than a Brigadier-General, it is safe to say he was not above a Sergeant, ordered the men around as if he were reconstructing an entire train.

His obstinancy was soon apparent to my very alert observation. No matter what one of the men began to do, he stopped him and set him to work in another manner.

This amiable trait of his character I turned to my own advantage. When things were righted and he called out that one man must go back with a message and the rest follow him, I said audibly that I would "go on," and had my expectations realized by his ordering me to go back to meet Captain Shuman.

Not being deeply impressed with the necessity of encountering that individual, I followed the road no longer than was necessary to take me beyond sight and hearing of the men who, with the wagon, had started in the opposite direction. Entering the woods, I returned to my horse, mounted and hurried on.

As I neared the place where the firing had occurred, I kept a sharp lookout for a dead Confederate in decent clothes, intending to appropriate them. It is proverbially slow work waiting for dead men's shoes, and I found it considerably more tedious still trying to acquire a more extended outfit. In all the four miles to Petterbridge's there were no signs of a skirmish visible, saving a dead horse and a discarded musket or two. I wanted at the first opportunity to discard my blue trousers for a pair of the Rebel colors. Many of the men in the Confederate army at that time wore such parts of Union soldiers' clothes as they had been able to get to replace their own ragged and filthy garments. I knew the blue trousers I wore would not be likely to excite any suspicion, still I preferred to use every precaution.