Leaving the place by a gate near the stables, which led into a grove, I threaded my way through it, then turning west I rode across a meadow and through another grove, where I came to a road which I followed until I reached the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. I intended to avoid observation as far as I could. I carried passes which would prevent any serious trouble if my detainers were our own troops. But a meeting with any of them might require me to lose considerable time. There was, besides, the possibility that I might chance on a party of Rebels lurking around and I was particularly anxious to avoid such.
Fortunately I met but few persons. Some passed without accosting me. Three times when approaching sounds indicated more than a single individual, I drew off into shelter and squads of four or five men rode rapidly past. Who or what they were I was too far off to distinguish.
As soon as I was on the tow-path I put my horse to a gallop and passed rapidly over a number of miles. Several times I was obliged to make my way up and down the steep banks to avoid being stopped. At one particularly forbidding spot, where the rocks overhung the path, some guard at an exalted altitude sang out a question about my destination, which I did not stop to answer. He repeated his inquiry and emphasized it by sending a bullet after me. Luckily it went wide of the mark.
CHAPTER III.
Another hour's riding, a ten minute's pause to reconnoiter, and I crossed to the other side of the Potomac by a rough and almost impassable ford. Making the top of the rocks which faced the river, I gave my horse time to get his breath, while I sat on a stone beside him. Night and darkness had almost shut in the view on every side. The moon was up but was obscured by clouds except for a moment or two at a time. I could hear the faint swish of the water as it flowed over the stones immediately below, but save for that an intense stillness prevailed.
Rising after a few moments' contemplation of a landscape, which I could but faintly see, I buried my passes and the one other valuable paper I carried under a huge stone. I then felt that I was fairly started on my perilous undertaking. I was on the Virginia side of the river, in a region known to be swarming with Rebels who asked nothing better than to catch a Union spy. I well knew that if I should run across any of them in such a way as to arouse their suspicions my life would not be worth the asking, and I would share the fate of many who had tried before.
As I now had no passes or any way of proving my identity, I also had to guard equally against meeting any of our own troops, for unless I should chance on an acquaintance among them, they would be certain to hold me prisoner. My endeavor was to avoid every one, for a small foraging party or a few belated pickets might prove as disastrous to me as "an army with banners." I had determined that it would be necessary for me to avoid all well-traveled roads and all towns, even the smallest villages, and to make my way through the dense woods when ever I could, taking advantage of such bridle-paths as I could find running in the direction I wanted to go.
Before I had rode many miles I became convinced that a general move toward the Potomac of some sort was going on. Whenever I approached a road I could tell from the sounds that persons were passing along it, not rapidly or in any large sized bodies, but mostly on foot and singly, or in small squads of six or eight. They seemed to be pressing on too steadily for ordinary skulkers, yet in a too "go as you please" style for troops under command.