Ham Seay and I being mere privates were ordered to another tree. But we could not help seeing that cordial relations were quickly established between our commander and this young woman. We saw her presently take down her magnificent back hair and remove from it some papers. They were not “curl papers,” or that sort of stuffing which women call “rats.” Stuart was a very gallant man, and he received the papers with much fervor. He spread them out carefully on the ground, and seemed to be reading what was written or drawn upon them. Then he talked long and earnestly with the young woman and seemed to be coming to some definite sort of understanding with her. Then she dined with him on some fried salt pork and some hopelessly indigestible fried paste which we called bread. Then he mounted her on her mare again and summoned Ham Seay and me. “Escort this young lady back to Captain Irving,” he said. “Tell him to send her to the Federal lines under flag of truce, with the message that she was inadvertently captured in a picket charge, and that as General Stuart does not make war on women or children, he begs to return her to her home and friends.” We did all this. The next day, Stuart with a strong force advanced to Mason’s and Munson’s hills. From there we could clearly see a certain house in Washington. It had many windows, and each had a dark Holland shade. When we stood guard we were ordered to observe minutely and report accurately the slidings up and down of those Holland shades. We never knew what three shades up, two half up, and five down might signify. But we had to report it, nevertheless, and Stuart seemed from that time to have an almost preternatural advance perception of the enemy’s movements. That young woman certainly had a superb shock of hair. A MIDNIGHT CRIME THE CRIMINAL’S OWN ACCOUNT OF IT As there is no law that can now reach my crime, I may as well tell all about it. Soon after we sat down before Petersburg, in the summer of 1864, I was sent on a little military mission accompanied by Johnny Garrett, into the land of desolation--that part of Northern Virginia which lay sometimes in the possession of one army, sometimes in possession of the other, but was mostly left in nobody’s possession at all, and open to raids from both sides. That region had been swept by fire and sword for nearly four years. It had been tramped over by both armies, and latterly had been subjected to that process of destruction which Sheridan had in mind when he said of another region that “the crow that flies over it must carry his rations with him.” How anybody managed to live at all in such a region has always been a puzzle, but a few people did.