Several officers approached us, accompanied by our commander. I was requested to dismount, when our officer politely introduced me to the other, saying:
"The Colonel is anxious to know how in the world you could have gotten by his picket on this bridge last night."
"Yes" says the Colonel, "I've had men on post here who declare that no one passed them during the night."
I was taken all aback, because I had told the party who had captured me that I had followed the road right along.
"Well," said I, "I walked right over this bridge last night, and saw no one here at all."
What a whopper that was; but I knew that I'd got to go through with it. Turning abruptly away from us, both the officers walked off a short distance and brought a sergeant forward to hear my statement; luckily for me, he admitted that at a certain hour he had been obliged to leave the bridge in charge of one man alone; but he insisted that it was for a short time only. After this admission the sergeant and his officer had some interesting talk, in rather an emphatic tone of voice, in which my officer and our squad seemed to take a lively interest. They evidently felt that they had found a weak spot in the infantry line of pickets, and rather enjoyed the honor of having caught the fish that had gotten through the net.
After this little affair had been so happily passed, to my great relief, they all seemed to be in good humor with themselves and with me, and were rather inclined to give me credit for having passed through their infantry successfully. As my escort's horse was having to carry double, and could not be expected to travel as fast as the others, the officer in command directed a second man to stay with us, while himself and the rest of the body-guard rode ahead.
They assumed that, being again inside of their picket-line there was no danger of my getting out to the Yankees—if I had wanted to try to escape from them.
We were directed to hurry to a certain house, where they would order breakfast, and very considerately urging us to hurry along, so we could have it hot. I was apprehensive, from this talk of a breakfast in a house, that I should be landed back into the old bushwhacker's shanty, where I had taken a greasy supper the night before, and had been put to bed in his barn.
I was not sure of the road, nor would I recognize the house, as I had seen it only at night when approaching it from the other side. I felt relieved when we turned out of the broad road into one not so well traveled, which led to the left or south, in the direction of Fairfax or the railroad. To a question as to our destination, my man said: "We are to go to Headquarters, I reckon, but we are to stop up here for a rest and feed."