Across the corridor from the old assembly-hall was a chamber that later became interesting through its occupancy by an unknown woman who came to the tavern one morning in 1816, plainly in ill health. She was accompanied by a few servants, with whom she conversed only in French, and neither she nor they could be drawn into any communication with other persons, except what was necessary to engage accommodations and order meals. On the fourth day of her stay, there appeared on the scene a strange man, who from various indications was assumed to be her husband. An hour after his arrival she died in his arms. He buried her in St. Paul’s cemetery on the outskirts of the town, planting a willow-tree over her grave, and raising at its head a stone inscribed to the memory simply of “A Female Stranger,” with this stanza from Pope’s “Unfortunate Lady”: “How loved, how honored once, avails thee not, To whom related, or by whom begot. A heap of dust alone remains of thee, ’Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.” And the Female Stranger remains a mystery to this day, though many efforts have been made to discover her identity. A local suspicion that she was Theodosia Allston, the daughter of Aaron Burr, seems to be discredited by the fact that Theodosia’s disappearance occurred in 1812, and that her husband was dead long before the Stranger came to Clagett’s Tavern. How public-spirited a citizen Washington was is attested by his having laid the foundation of Alexandria’s free-school system, presented the town with its first fire-engine, organized its first militia company, and got up a lottery to raise a fund for improving the country roads thereabout. He was an earnest Freemason, and the lodge named for him owns a number of relics like the chair in which he presided as Master, his apron, his wedding gloves, his spurs, his pruning-knife, and a penknife which his mother gave him when he was eleven years old and which he carried till he died. It has also the last authentic portrait of him taken from life, a pastel done by William Williams of Philadelphia. In and around Alexandria are other points of interest, including the house in which Colonel Ellsworth was killed, and one where, it is said, Martha Washington secreted herself for a while during her widowhood for fear of a slave uprising; a theological seminary which has graduated, among other eminent divines, Bishops Phillips Brooks of Boston and Henry C. Potter of New York; and the nearly obliterated remains of the road which, in 1765, General Braddock began to build into the West.