This dispatch he had sent immediately on receiving General Johnston's order to direct their return. The commissioners were of course surprised and disappointed. The mission was not entered upon without the deliberate assent and advice of General Johnston, after a full consultation with Governor Vance, and also with General Hardee's entire concurrence, and a safe-conduct from him in General Johnston's absence. The engine, however, was reversed, General Hampton retired, and the train had proceeded slowly about a mile or so in the direction of Raleigh, when it was again halted, and this time by a detachment of a hundred Spencer rifles, a portion of Kilpatrick's cavalry, under the command of General Atkins. The commissioners were informed that they must proceed to the headquarters of General Kilpatrick, distant a mile or more. While waiting for a conveyance they were courteously treated, and a band of music ordered up for their entertainment. After a brief interval General Kilpatrick's carriage arrived for them, and they proceeded in it under escort to the residence of Mr. Fort, where the General then was. He received them politely, examined the safe-conduct of General Hardee, and the dispatches for General Sherman, and then remarked that the circumstances in which they were placed, according to the laws of war, gave him the right, which, however, he had not the smallest intention of exercising, to consider them as prisoners of war. "It is true, gentlemen," said he, "that you came under the protection of a flag of truce, and are the bearers of important dispatches from your Governor to my Commanding General, but that gave you no right to cross my skirmish-line while a fight was going on." Governor Graham remarked that the circumstances under which they came explained themselves, and were their own justification. That in a special train, with open windows, proceeding with the deliberation proper to a flag of truce, with only five persons in a single car, they had little temptation to proceed if they had known, in time to stop, that they were to be exposed to a cross-fire from the skirmish-lines of the two armies.