When morning came, the pair of women hid themselves between two logs that lay in a dense thicket, and there they remained throughout the daylight hours. There, too, before noon, they consumed the last fragments of their food.
During the next night they made small progress. They succeeded, indeed, in crossing a deep and muddy creek that lay in front of them, but it was only to find themselves confronted by a roadway, which ran athwart their line of march, and which, on this night, at least, was heavily picketed and constantly patrolled by scouting squads of cavalry.
Agatha crept on her hands and knees, and quite noiselessly, to a point from which she could make out the situation, and there the pair remained in hiding among the weeds and bushes that skirted an old and partially destroyed fence, until daylight came again.
With the daylight came a considerable thinning of the line of videttes in front, and toward nightfall, after a day of toilsome crawling back and forth in search of a way of escape, the two women succeeded in crossing the road unobserved. After crawling for a hundred yards or so beyond the road, they hid themselves as securely as they could, and waited for night to come again.
They were suffering the pangs of excessive hunger and thirst now, and gnawing roots and twigs by way of appeasing the terrible craving. It was obvious to Agatha that this night must make an end of her attempt in one way or another. She must reach the Confederate lines before the coming of another day, or both she and her companion must perish of hunger, or surrender themselves and be hanged. She suggested this thought to Martha, whose only answer was:
"Anyhow, you'se got your pistol, Miss Agatha."
There were still two miles or more to go before reaching the little patch of briars and young chestnut-trees just in front of the Fairfax Court-house village, which was Agatha's objective. During her peddling trips, Martha had learned that Federal sharpshooters were thrown into this thicket every night, usually between midnight and morning, for the purpose of annoying the Confederate pickets, stationed not fifty yards away. She had learned, too, that nearly every morning, about daylight, the Confederates were accustomed to rid themselves of the annoyance by sending out a cavalry force to charge the thicket and clear it of its occupants. It was Agatha's plan to hide herself and her maid there, and be captured by Stuart's men when they should come.
But she could not enter the bushes until the sharpshooters should be in position. Otherwise they would be sure to discover her while placing themselves. As soon as the riflemen had crept to their posts, Agatha, favoured by the unusual darkness of a thickly clouded night, crept to a hiding-place just in rear of the men. There she and Martha lay upon the ground during long hours, well-nigh famished, and suffering severely from cold, for the autumn was now well advanced.
Unfortunately for Agatha's plan, the Confederates had adopted new methods for this night. Instead of ordering cavalry to clear the thicket, they had decided to clear it with canister. Accordingly, a battery of artillery had been ordered to the front, and bivouacked half a mile in rear of Fairfax Court-house. Thence just before daylight two guns had been dragged forward by prolonge ropes, and stationed under the trees of a little grove about fifty yards in front of the cover from which the Federal sharpshooters were occasionally firing.
Just at dawn, these two guns suddenly and furiously opened upon the bushes with canister in double charges.