Her first step was to visit friends on the Potomac above Washington. There she learned minutely what the situation was. With some difficulty she secured permission to go as a guest to a house near Falls Church, in Virginia. She had hoped there to find Confederate picket-posts, and to work her way to some one of them by stealth or strategy, or by boldly taking risks. She found instead that the nearest Confederate outpost was at Fairfax Court-house, nine miles away, while the inner Federal lines lay on the route from Falls Church to Vienna, and stretched both ways from those points. Stuart was no longer at Mason's and Munson's Hills. With the approach of winter the Confederates had retired to their fortified line, and Stuart, with the cavalry, had established himself at Camp Cooper and other camps, three or four miles in rear of the Fairfax Court-house line, which now constituted his extreme advance. Moreover, the Federal army, under McClellan's skilled and vigilant command, had been completely reorganised, drilled, disciplined, and converted from the chaotic mass described in his report--quoted in a former chapter--into an alert and trustworthy army, destined, during later campaigns, to cover itself with glory. At present, McClellan, who had no thought of advancing upon Centreville and Manassas, where the Confederates were strongly fortified, was at any rate manifesting spirit by continually pressing the Confederate outposts, and now and then making considerable demonstrations against them. His inner picket-lines, as already explained, were drawn very near the house in which Agatha was sojourning. His advanced posts--where the skirmishing was frequent--were along the Fairfax Court-house line. Between these two lines lay eight or ten miles of thick and difficult country, held by the Federals, and scouted over every day, but not regularly picketed. Thus, instead of a mile or two of difficulty, Agatha had before her ten miles of trouble, with a prospect of worse at the end of it. Time and extraordinary care were necessary to meet these new difficulties. Agatha's first problem was to find out all she could of facts, to gather exact and trustworthy information. In this endeavour she had a shrewdly intelligent co-adjutor in Martha. By way of avoiding suspicion--for the family with whom she was staying were known to be strongly Southern in their sympathies, and the Federal officers had begun to understand the devoted loyalty of the negroes to the families that owned them--Agatha established Martha in a cabin of her own a mile or more from the house. There Martha posed as a free negro woman, who was disposed to make a living for herself by selling fried chickens, biscuits, and pies to the Federal soldiers on the interior picket-lines, and a little later to those posted farther in advance.