"Why, that's 'Stuttering Dave,' the drollest, smartest man in this regiment, and one of the best fellows you ever met."
"What regiment does he belong to?" I asked.
"To the Twenty-first New York," said the soldier, "but ever since I have known him, he has been with a scouting party. He used to live in Virginia before the war, and is well acquainted about here."
That day I called upon the Colonel of the regiment to which the man belonged, and informed him of my wishes, which, if agreeable to him, I would ask him to send "Stuttering Dave" to my quarters.
Shortly after sundown he came, and to my astonishment, I found that his stuttering propensity had entirely disappeared, and that he conversed with me with surprising ease and intelligence, and a quiet earnestness that betokened a solid and well-informed man. The fact was that stuttering with him was only a favorite amusement, and so naturally was it simulated, that no one would suspect he was shamming or that he was anything else but a confirmed stutterer of the most incorrigible type. In the interview which followed he signified his willingness to enter the secret service, and a day or two later he was detailed to my force. Here he served with such ability and credit that he was shortly discharged from his regiment altogether, and for the rest of the war was one of my most faithful and valued operatives.
A few days after this interview, David Graham, for that was his real name, otherwise known as "Stuttering Dave," set out under my instructions, on a trip within the rebel lines. As he was about leaving my tent, he shook hands with me, and said in his dry manner:
"G-g-go-good-by, M-m-m-major, I'm g-g-g-oin to have s-s-some fun before I g-g-get home, if I d-d-don't I'm a g-g-goat, that's all."
Cautioning him against allowing his propensity for "fun" to get him into trouble, I accompanied him to the edge of the camp, and saw him set out in the direction of the Confederate forces.
Graham had adopted the disguise of a peddler of notions, and carried in his pack a goodly supply of buttons, needles, thread, pins and such a trifling articles as he knew would be in great demand by the soldiers. Discarding his uniform, and dressed in a suit of butternut jean, with a broad-brimmed hat, a stout stick, and a pack across his shoulder, he appeared a veritable tramping peddler. No one, to have seen him, would have imagined that he was an emissary of the secret service, and they would little have suspected that the stuttering, harmless-looking fellow who was hawking his wares, knew aught about military affairs, or the plans and movements of an army.
It was in the fast deepening twilight of a beautiful evening, and but a few days after he had left the Union lines, that a party of rebel soldiers, weary and hungry with the toilsome march of the day, were resting around a camp-fire, engaged in the preparations of their evening meal.