She wondered about the shots. A crowd of drunken fools were still hanging around the Galt House bar perhaps. She went back to bed and slept again.
It was eight o'clock before the crash of a volley from the Arsenal enclosure roused her. She leaped to her feet, rushed to the window and stood trembling as volley followed volley in a long rattle of rifle and shotgun and pistol.
A neighbor hurried past with a gun in his hand. She asked him what the fighting meant.
"Armed Abolitionists have invaded Virginia," he shouted.
Still it meant nothing to her personally. Her husband was not an Abolitionist. She had known him for more than a year. She had been with him day and night for six months in the sweet intimacy of home and love.
And then the hideous truth came crashing on her terror-stricken soul. Cook had been recognized by a neighbor as he drove Colonel Washington's wagon across the Maryland bridge at dawn. A committee of citizens came to cross-examine her.
She faced them with blanched cheeks.
"My husband, an Abolitionist!" she gasped.
"He's with those murderers and robbers."
She turned on the men like a young tigress.