After the first battle of Bull Run, Stuart's cavalry was engaged in performing outpost duty on our front, which extended from the falls above Washington to Occoquan, on the lower Potomac. There were no opportunities for adventurous enterprise. McClellan's army was almost in a state of siege in Washington, and his cavalry but rarely showed themselves outside his infantry picket line. We had to go on picket duty three times a week and remain twenty-four hours. The work was pretty hard; but still, soldiers liked it better than the irksome life of the camp. I have often sat alone on my horse from midnight to daybreak, keeping watch over the sleeping army. During this period of inaction, the stereotyped message sent every night from Washington to the northern press was, "All quiet along the Potomac."

While I was a private in Stuart's cavalry, I never missed but one tour of outpost duty, and then I was confined in the hospital from an injury. With one other, I was stationed at the post on the road leading from Fall's Church to Lewinsville, in Fairfax. At night we relieved each other alternately, one sleeping while the other watched. About dusk, Capt. Jones had ridden to the post and instructed us that we had no troops outside our lines on that road, and that we must fire, without halting, on any body of men approaching from that direction, as they would be the enemy. The night was dark, and it had come my turn to sleep. I was lying on the ground, with the soft side of a stone for a pillow, when I was suddenly aroused by my companion, who called to me to mount, that the Yankees were coming. In an almost unconscious state I leaped into my saddle, and at the same instant threw forward my carbine, and both of us fired on a body of cavalry not fifty yards distant. Fortunately, we fired so low our bullets struck the ground just in front of them. The flash from my carbine in my horse's face frightened him terribly. He wheeled, and that is the last I remember about that night. The next thing I recollect is that some time during the next day I became conscious, and found myself lying on a bed at the house of the keeper of the toll-gate. Capt. Jones and several of the men of my company were standing by me. It appears that the night before Stuart had sent a company of cavalry to Lewinsville for some purpose. This company had gone out by one road and returned on the one where I had been posted. My horse had run away and fallen over a cow that was lying down, and rolled over me. The company of cavalry coming along the same way, their horses in front started and snorted at something lying in the road. They halted, some of them dismounted to see what it was, and discovered me there in an insensible state. They picked me up and carried me into the village, apparently dying. I was bruised from head to foot, and felt like every bone in my body had been broken. I had to be carried to Fairbay Court House in an ambulance. There is a tradition that when Capt. Jones looked on me that night he swore harder than the army in Flanders. The feelings he expressed for the officer in fault were not so benevolent as my Uncle Toby's for the fly.

While the cavalry did not have an opportunity to do much fighting during the first year of the war, they learned to perform the duties and endure the privations of a soldier's life. My experience in this school was of great advantage to me in the after years when I became a commander. There was a thirst for adventure among the men in the cavalry, and a positive pleasure to get an occasional shot "from a rifleman hid in a thicket." There were often false alarms, and sometimes real ones, from scouting parties of infantry who would come up at night to surprise our pickets. A vivid imagination united with a nervous temperament can see in the dark the shapes of many things that have no real existence. A rabbit making its nocturnal rounds, a cow grazing, a hog rooting for acorns, an owl hooting, or the screech of a night hawk could often arouse and sometimes stampede an outpost or draw the fire of a whole line of pickets. At the first shot, the reserve would mount; and soon the videttes would come running in at full speed. There was an old gray horse roaming about the fields at Fairfax Court House during the first winter of the war that must have been fired at a hundred times at night by our videttes, and yet was never touched. I have never heard whether Congress has voted him a pension. The last time that I was ever on picket was in February, 1862. The snow was deep and hard frozen. My post was on the outskirts of Fairfax Court House, at the junction of the Washington road and turnpike. I wore a woollen hood to keep my ears from freezing, and a blanket thrown around me as a protection against the cold wind. The night was clear, and all that's best of dark and bright. I sat on my horse under the shadow of a tree, both as a protection from the piercing blast and as a screen from the sight of an enemy. I had gone on duty at midnight, to remain until daybreak. The deep silence was occasionally broken by the cry of "Halt!" from some distant sentinel, as he challenged the patrol or relief. The swaying branches of the trees in the moonlight cast all sorts of fantastic forms on the crystal snow. In this deep solitude, I was watching for danger and communing with the spirit of the past. At this very spot, a few nights before, the vidette had been fired on by a scouting party of infantry that had come up from McClellan's camps below. But the old gray horse had several times got up a panic there which raised a laugh on the soldiers.

Now I confess that I was about as much afraid of ridicule as of being shot, and so, unless I got killed or captured, I resolved to spend the night there. Horatius Cocles was not more determined to hold his position on the bridge of the Tiber, than I was to stay at my post, but perhaps his motives were less mixed than mine. I had been long pondering and remembering, and in my reverie had visited the fields that I had traversed "in life's morning march when my bosom was young." I was suddenly aroused by the crash of footsteps breaking the crust of the hard snow. The sound appeared to proceed from something approaching me with the measured tread of a file of soldiers. It was screened from my view by some houses near the roadside. I was sure that it was an enemy creeping up to get a shot at me, for I thought that even the old horse would not have ventured out on such a night, unless under orders. My heart began to sicken within me pretty much like Hector's did when he had to face the wrath of Achilles. My horse, shivering with cold, with the instinct of danger, pricked up his ears and listened as eagerly as I did to the footsteps as they got near. I drew my pistol, cocked it, and took aim at the corner around which this object must come. I wanted to get the advantage of the first shot. Just then the hero of a hundred panics appeared—the old gray horse! I returned my pistol to my belt and relapsed into reverie. I was happy: my credit as a soldier had been saved.

A couple of days after this my company returned there, as usual, on picket. On this same morning Stuart came, making an inspection of the outposts. It happened that there were two young ladies living at Fairfax Court House, acquaintances of his, who did not like to stay in such an exposed situation, and so Stuart had arranged to send them to the house of a friend near Fryingpan, which was further within our lines. At that time the possibility of our army ever retiring to Richmond had not been conceived by the rank and file. Stuart had then become a brigadier-general, and Capt. Jones had been promoted to be colonel of the 1st Virginia cavalry. Although I served under Stuart almost from the beginning of the war, I had no personal acquaintance with him before then. He asked Capt. Blackford to detail a man to go along as an escort for the two ladies. I had often been invited to the house of one of them by her father, so I was selected on that account to go with them. I left my horse with my friend Beattie to lead back to camp, and took a seat in the carriage with the ladies. This was on the 12th of February, 1862. It began snowing just as we started, and it was late in the afternoon before we got to Fryingpan. I then went in the carriage to Stuart's headquarters a few miles off, at Centreville. It was dark when I got there. I reported to him the result of my mission to Fryingpan, and asked for a pass to go back to the camp of my regiment, which was about four miles off on Bull Run. Stuart told me that the weather was too bad for me to walk to camp that night, but to stay where I was until next morning. He and Generals Joseph E. Johnston and G. W. Smith occupied the Grigsby house and messed together. I sat down by a big wood fire in an open fireplace in the front room, where he and the other two generals were also sitting. I never spoke a word, and would have been far happier trudging through the snow back to camp, or even as a vidette on a picket post. I felt just as much out of place and uneasy as a mortal would who had been lifted to a seat by the side of the gods on Olympus. Presently supper was announced. The generals all walked into the adjoining room, and Stuart told me to come in. After they had sat down at the table, Stuart observed that I was not there and sent for me. I was still sitting by the fire. I obeyed his summons like a good soldier, and took my place among the dil majores. I was pretty hungry, but did not enjoy my supper. I would have preferred fasting or eating with the couriers. I know I never spoke a word to any one—I don't think I raised my eyes from off my plate while I was at the table.

Now, while I felt so much oppressed by the presence of men of such high rank, there was nothing in their deportment that produced it. It was the same way the next morning. Stuart had to send after me to come in to breakfast. I went pretty much in the same dutiful spirit that Gibbon says that he broke his marriage engagement: "I sighed as a lover and obeyed as a son." But now my courage rose; I actually got into conversation with Joe Johnston, whom I would have regarded it as a great privilege the day before to view through a long-range telescope. The generals talked of Judah P. Benjamin's (who was then Secretary of War) breach of courtesy to Stonewall Jackson that had caused Jackson to send in his resignation. They were all on Jackson's side. There was nothing going on about Centreville to indicate the evacuation that took place three weeks after that. Stuart let me have a horse to ride back to camp. As soon as I got there, Col. Jones sent for me to come to his tent. I went, and he offered me the place of adjutant of the regiment. I had had no more expectation of such a thing than of being translated on Elijah's chariot to the skies. Of course, I accepted it. I was never half as much frightened in any fight I was in as I was on the first dress parade I conducted. But I was not permitted to hold the position long. About two months after that, when we had marched to meet McClellan at, Yorktown, my regiment reorganized under the new act of the Confederate Congress. Fitz Lee was elected colonel in place of Jones. This was the result of an attempt to mix democracy with military discipline. Fitz Lee did not reappoint me as adjutant, and so I lost my first commission on the spot where Cornwallis lost his sword. This was at the time an unrecognized favor. If I had been retained as adjutant, I would probably have never been anything else. So at the close of the first year of the war I was, in point of rank, just where I had begun. Well, it did not break my heart. When the army was retiring from Centreville, Stuart's cavalry was the rear guard, and I had attracted his favorable notice by several expeditions I had led to the rear of the enemy. So Stuart told me to come to his headquarters and act as a scout for him. A scout is not a spy who goes in disguise, but a soldier in arms and uniform, who goes among as enemy's lines to get information about them. Among the survivors of the Army of the Potomac there are many legends afloat, and religiously believed to be true, of a mysterious person—a sort of Flying Dutchman or Wandering Jew—prowling among their camps in the daytime in the garb of a beggar or with a pilgrim's staff, and leading cavalry raids upon them at night. In popular imagination, I have been identified with that mythical character.

On the day after Mr. Lincoln's assassination, Secretary Stanton telegraphed to Gen. Hancock, then in command at Winchester, Va., that I had been seen at the theatre in Washington on that fatal night. Fortunately, I could prove an alibi by Hancock himself, as I was at that very time negotiating a truce with him. I recently heard an officer of the United States army tell a story of his being with the guard for a wagon train, and my passing him with my command on the pike, all of us dressed as Federal soldiers, and cutting the train out from behind him. I laughed at it, like everybody who heard it, and did not try to unsettle his faith. To have corrected it would have been as cruel as to dispel the illusion of childhood that the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" is literally true, or to doubt the real presence of Santa Claus. It was all pure fiction about our being dressed in blue uniforms, or riding with him. I did capture the wagon train at the time and place mentioned, Oct. 26, 1863, at the Chestnut Fork, near Warrenton, Va., but we never even saw the guard. They had got sleepy, and gone on to camp, and left me to take care of their wagons—which I did. The quartermaster in charge of them, Capt. Stone, who was made prisoner, called to pay his respects to me a few days ago. I can now very well understand how the legendary heroes of Greece were created. I always wore the Confederate uniform, with the insignia of my rank. So did my men. So any success I may have had, either as an individual scout or partisan commander, cannot be accounted for on the theory that it was accomplished through disguise. The hundreds of prisoners I took are witnesses to the contrary.