As soon as I reached the city I made my way to a restaurant for a nondescript meal, which might be called either a very late breakfast or an early dinner. From there I went to Willard's, where I took a room and a hot bath. Ever since I had decided to undertake the hazardous enterprise on which I was bent, I had had an intense desire to be off and avoid all delay, and it required more time than I cared to give to remove the traces of my long, hard ride and furbish myself up into a fit condition for calling, but the calls I was to make were the preliminary steps in my hastily constructed plans and too important to be omitted. The bright sun of the morning was almost obscured by hazy clouds as I started out that warm September afternoon. I sat in four different parlors that afternoon, and my fair Rebel entertainers little dreamed that I, who had "looked them up for old acquaintance sake while I had a few hours' leisure," sat with every nerve strained, only waiting for an opportunity to put the seemingly trivial questions which were to gain me the information so necessary to the successful carrying out of my plans. All direct questions had to be most carefully avoided and it was discouraging to lead up to the subject and then have the conversation go over and around the point to which I had been so carefully striving to bring it. At the end of my second call I was ready to curse the luck which made further effort necessary. During the third call I began to get the desired enlightenment, and at the next house a few freely volunteered remarks rounded my scrappy knowledge. That I did not change countenance, I knew from the face of my entertainer, and she little guessed the joy I felt when she casually told me what I had been striving so hard to find out. My one desire then was to get away, and it required some effort to keep up my part of the conversation. If I had followed the predominant impulse of the moment I would have sped away and "stayed not on the order of my going," instead of drawing my call out to the proper, lingering length. When I again reached Willard's, I inquired if Colonel Barbour had yet arrived, and learning that he had, I went directly to his room. There were three or four other officers there, all anxious to learn any news I could tell and eager to question, but as I was not personally acquainted with any of them, I cut all conversation as short as I could without actual rudeness, and avoided being detained long. I ordered my horse, and feeling the necessity of eating while I had an opportunity, I went in to dinner.