His laughing question assured me that I was not to be arrested, and, recovering myself, I was able to receive him calmly and pleasantly, as he said:
"I got back shortly after you had left, and they sent me out to relieve you. I'll take that dispatch out; why, it's five miles almost; we're much obliged to you, though."
I rather reluctantly handed over the envelope, which, perhaps luckily for me, had not been tampered with; the natty orderly slipped it under his belt and, after a few more pleasant words, rode off.
In a disappointed mood I retraced my steps to the telegraph station, walking along at a much more leisurely gait than when starting out. I had the leisure to think over my future operation, and before I had returned to the office, had about resolved in my own mind that there was not any use in longer staying about there. But, remembering my experience at Fort Pickens and in Patterson's army in getting into our own lines from that of the enemy, my mission in both cases being misunderstood and my object mistrusted by our own officers, because I had only my own word to support my reports, I fully determined that, without regard to the risk of carrying papers, I should not again return to our lines without taking with me some documentary or other proof to sustain my observations. I had thought, while in possession of the official dispatch, what a pleasant gratification it would be to my old friend Covode to be able to show him an intercepted dispatch from Richmond to the commander of the Rebel armies in the field; and as the thought of this performance dwelt in my brain as I walked along, I formed a hasty plan, which I believed I could mature and carry into effect—of securing from the files or papers in the telegraph office a number of copies of the most important dispatches, either in the handwriting of Generals Joseph E. Johnston or Beauregard, addressed to Richmond, or at least signed by them officially.
At the particular time during which I was at this point, it seemed to me that the burden of the wires was the messages of inquiry for the sick and wounded, mixed up with florid dispatches of congratulation, coupled almost always with expressions of the great possibilities of the South.
There were but few official messages of any importance that I was able to hear; those carried to and fro by the orderlies, and to which I gave my personal attention in a quiet way, would turn out to be generally some Quartermaster's or Commissaries' orders or requisitions, and I became nervous and tired over the strain or tension I had been obliged to maintain in order to overhear the instruments in the midst of the confusion always existing about the place.
As the telegraph table was jammed up tightly against the board wall of the house, under the window, it became my favorite place for loafing when outside of the office. I could sit on the board platform and, with my back against the boards under the window distinctly hear every word that went over the wires, the thin partition between my head and the inside answered as a sounding-board, really helping to convey the signals by vibration.
If the reader is anxious to try an experiment, let him place an ear against even a thick wall and allow some person with a penknife handle to tap or knock ever so softly, but quickly and sharply, in imitation of a telegraph instrument's click, and you will be astonished at the distinctness with which the wall will carry the sound like a telegraph wire.
There was always about the place a lot of idle loafers—Rebel soldiers off duty, who naturally gravitated toward the railroad stations, where the little stores or sutlers were usually to be found, dealing out commissary whisky and tobacco.
Every day, and for every train, there would be crowds of sickly-looking soldiers at the station in care of friends, who were taking them to the trains for their homes. Dear me! I recall it as if it were but yesterday, how the hundreds of poor fellows looked as they were helped aboard the crowded cars by their poor old fathers, or perhaps younger brothers. I always associate in my mind a sick Rebel, with his big eyes and sallow face, with a resemblance to a crazy tramp one sees sometimes nowadays, injured while stealing a ride on a freight train, gazing at everything in a stupid sort of way, clothed in a pair of butternut pants and coat, and big gray blanket over his shoulders even in that August sun. I saw lots of them go away from Manassas that I felt sure would never return to trouble us. They were not all sick, not by any means; some of the chaps that gathered about our place were about as lively and fractious as one meets at an Irish picnic.