The debatable ground "between the lines" did, however, furnish history with some notable incidents wherein women figured as the chief influences, even if the names of these heroines were not chronicled. For obvious reasons, the names were not disclosed at the time of the incidents when the respective armies alternately held the ground where lived the women whose deeds were chronicled, and afterward these deeds were forgotten in graver matters. One fair inhabitant of Washington in the early days of the struggle used to give Stuart, who for a time after the battle of Bull Run held the southern bank of the Potomac, most valuable information by means of a cunningly devised system of signals, executed by the raising and lowering of the window shades in her house, which was within full sight of the Confederate pickets. For a time the Confederacy had a regular force of female spies in the capital of their opponents, and some of the information thus gained was of great service. Of course the Federal government also maintained a corps of female spies, though the name of only one of all the roll on both sides--that of Belle Boyd--is known to fame. Belle Boyd's adventurous career during the war doubtless produced some few results in the movement of the armies of the South; but even she hardly did yeoman service for her cause. In respect of espionage, the Confederacy had a decided advantage over its enemies, for the society at Richmond, both social and official, was made up of more constant and, therefore, better known elements than that of the always fluctuating population of Washington. So at Richmond it was hardly possible for a woman to seem that which she was not in the matter of sympathy, while in the national capital the constant influx of strangers and sojourners made the keeping of a military or political secret a matter of the utmost difficulty.