After a month or two of cautious correspondence with friends and others who were to aid her in carrying out her purpose, Agatha Ronald set out one day, and drove with Martha, her maid, to Winchester, where she had friends. After a week's stay there, she made her way to a little town on the Potomac, again taking up quarters with friends.

From this point, she communicated through her friends with intimates of theirs who lived in Maryland. Finally she had arrangements made by which a succession of houses was open to her, all of them the homes of people strongly in sympathy with the South. But she must first manage to get through the Federal lines unobserved, and in this a Federal commander unwittingly aided her. He threw a small force one day into the little town in which she was staying, meaning to hold possession of it as a part of the loosely drawn lines on the upper river. This left Agatha within Federal domain—a young gentlewoman visiting friends, and in no way attracting attention to herself. Presently she moved on into Maryland, and by short stages made her way to the house of a very ardent Southern family, near the Pennsylvania border. From there it was easy for her to go to Harrisburg, and thence by rail to Baltimore.

The chief purpose of her journey was now practically accomplished. She had established what she called her "underground railroad," with a multitude of stations, and a very roundabout route. But it would serve its purpose all the better for that, she thought, as the chief condition of its successful operation was that its existence should at no time be suspected.

In Baltimore, proceeding with the utmost caution, she put herself into indirect communication with a large number of "Dixie girls"—as young women in that city whose hearts were with the South were called. It would not do for her to meet these young women personally. That might excite suspicion, especially as most of them had brothers in the Southern army. But through others she succeeded in organising them secretly into a band prepared to do her work.

That work was the purchase of medicines—chiefly morphine and quinine—and the smuggling of them through the lines into the Confederacy for the use of the armies there. For it is one of the barbarisms of war which civilisation has not yet outgrown, that medicines, even those which are imperatively necessary for the saving of life and the prevention of suffering, are held to be as strictly contraband as gunpowder itself is.

Agatha's plan was to have her associates in Baltimore purchase medicines and surgical appliances in that city and elsewhere—buying only in small quantities in each case, in order to avoid suspicion, but buying large quantities in the aggregate—and forward them to her in Virginia by way of her underground railroad; that is to say, passing them from hand to hand over the route by which she had herself reached Baltimore.

Having perfected these arrangements, her next task was herself to get back to her home, whither she did not mean to go empty-handed. She had gowns made for herself and Martha, using two thicknesses of oiled silk as interlining. Between these she bestowed as much morphia as could be placed there without attracting attention.

This done, she was ready for her return journey, which presented extraordinary difficulty. She could not return by the way she had come, lest the purpose of her journey should be discovered, and her plans for the future be thwarted. She must find some other way.

At first she thought of making her way southward to the lower reaches of the Potomac, and depending upon chance for means of getting across the river there, but this was rendered impracticable by the news that the Confederates had retired from their advanced outposts to Manassas and Centreville, with the Fairfax Court-house line as their extreme advance position. This meant, of course, that they no longer held in any considerable force the posts along the lower river. Moreover, Agatha learned that both the Potomac below Washington, and the navigable part of the Rappahannock were closely patrolled now, by night and by day, by a numerous fleet of big and little Federal war-ships. There seemed no course open to her but to try in some way to get through to Stuart's pickets, if in any way or at any risk she could manage that. That she determined to attempt.

Her first step was to visit friends on the Potomac above Washington. 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.