"Thank you, and good-bye. I shall certainly enjoy my next ear of green corn if I am permitted to take it in your company, under some tree that you have honoured by making it your headquarters." "O, my ravenous cavalrymen will have eaten up all the green corn long before that time; but I'll give you a dinner if I have to raid a Federal picket-post to get it." With that he sprang into his saddle, waved a farewell, and rode away singing: "If you want to have a good time, Jine the cavalry, Jine the cavalry, Jine the cavalry, If you want to have a good time, Jine the cavalry, Jine the cav-al-ry." It was Stuart's boast at that time that he knew the face and name of every man in his old first regiment, and he afterward extended this boast to include all the men in the first brigade of Virginia Cavalry. He used to say: "I ought to remember those fellows; they made me a major-general." But however well Stuart knew his men, with whom he fraternised in a way very unusual to most officers bred in the regular army, as he had been, nobody ever pretended to know him well enough to guess with any accuracy what he would do next under any given circumstances. On this occasion he had not brought his staff with him, but that made small difference with an officer of his temper, whose habit of mind it was to disregard forms and ceremonies, and to go straight to his purpose, whatever it might happen to be. When he left Agatha, he rode at once to the camp of a detached company and asked for its captain. To him he said: "Send couriers to all the cavalry camps, and say that General Stuart orders the entire force to report in front at once." He designated three roads and four bridle-paths by which the commands were to move; and three or four points of rendezvous. Then he added: "Let the men move light--no baggage or blankets or anything else but arms and ammunition." A moment later he met Colonel Fitzhugh Lee, who had succeeded him in command of the old first regiment,--"my Mamelukes," as Stuart loved to call them. The two grasped hands, and Stuart said: "I've ordered everybody to the front. You are to take command on the left. We must drive the Federal pickets back from all their advanced posts. They are growing impudent. They fired at a lady under my personal escort to-day. We must teach them not to repeat that." Of course the men who had done the firing in question had no means of knowing that there was a woman among the assailed, and Stuart knew the fact very well. But he chose to regard whatever happened as something intended. Turning from Lee, he galloped to the camp of some batteries, and said to the officer in command: "I wish you'd lend me a couple of guns or so for the afternoon. I've some work to do. Send them out along the Falls Church road. I'll not have to go borrowing guns after a little while. I'll have some mounted batteries of my own."