"I want you to do me a very great service. I want you to ask General Stuart to let me visit him at the outposts. He'll offer to come here to call upon me instead, for he is always gallant, but you are to tell him I will not permit that. The service needs him at the front, and I want to visit him there. Besides, I particularly want to take a peep at Washington City in its new guise as a foreign capital which we are besieging." The young man remonstrated. He protested that there was very great danger in the attempt--that raids from the picket-lines were of daily occurrence, that the firing was often severe--and all the rest of it, wherefore General Stuart would almost certainly forbid the young lady's proposed enterprise. The girl calmly looked the young man in the eyes--he was an old friend whom she had known from her childhood--and said, very solemnly: "Charlie, I am no more afraid of bullets than you are. My heart is set upon this visit, and you _must_ arrange it for me. As for General Stuart, I'll manage him, if you'll carry a note to him for me." That young man had once begun to make love to Agatha, and she had checked him gently and affectionately in time to spare his pride, and to make of him her willing knight for all time to come. So he answered promptly: "I'll carry your note, of course, and if Stuart gives permission, I'll beg to be myself your escort. Then, if anybody bothers you with bullets or anything else, it'll be a good deal the worse for him." The girl thanked him in a way that would have made a hero of him in her defence had occasion served, and presently she scribbled a little note and placed it in the young cavalryman's hands for delivery. It was simple enough, but it was so worded as to make sure that Stuart would promptly grant its request. It ran as follows: "MY DEAR GENERAL STUART:--I very much want to see you for half an hour out where you are, at Mason's or Munson's Hill, and not here at Fairfax Court-house. My visit will be absolutely and entirely in the public interest, though to all others than yourself I am pretending that it is prompted solely by the whim of a romantic young girl. Please send a permit at once, and please permit Lieutenant Fauntleroy, who bears this, to be my escort." The note was unsealed, of course, except by the honour of the gentleman who bore it. Stuart's response was prompt, as every act of his enthusiastic life was sure to be. He read the note, held a corner of the sheet in the blaze of his camp-fire, and retained his hold upon the farther corner of it until it was quite consumed. Then he dropped the charred sheets into the coals, and turning to Lieutenant Fauntleroy, commanded: