On the night of April 22nd a row-boat moved cautiously across the Potomac in the direction of the Virginia shore. This was the second time, it is believed, that the two men in the boat had tried to make the river crossing from Maryland to Virginia. The night before they had failed because it had been too dark and the tide had been too strong. The past eight days had doubtless seemed like an eternity to them.
Now they could see the Virginia shore and the dim outline of a landing but the thin youth at the oars did not head for the public wharf. He rowed on until he came to a smaller landing which belonged to a private home. They landed there, at Upper Machodoc Creek near what later became Dahlgren, in King George County.
The younger man helped his passenger out of the boat and together they approached the house on the bank of the creek, knocked on the door and asked for lodging for the night. The mistress of the house could doubtless see that the dark handsome man in the muddy Confederate uniform was badly in need of rest. Tradition says that she took them in for the night.
The next morning the two men left the Quesenberry home. The older man was limping badly and seemed to be in much pain. That day they traveled slowly on foot over back roads.
Toward dusk they came to a home set in a grove of beautiful trees. It was Cleydael, the residence of Doctor R. H. Stuart. Tradition says that the men knocked on the back door and asked for food and aid.
Whether Doctor Stuart rendered surgical aid to the man in the tattered uniform is still a controversial subject in that region. They did receive food and were waited on by Junius and Patsy Dixon, servants at Cleydael. Tradition says that the older man left a note to Doctor Stuart in which he enclosed a five-dollar bill and grudgingly thanked him for "what we did get."
Stories vary as to where the two men spent the night of April 23rd.
At some time or other they rested in the yard of St. Paul's Church, it is said. One account says that they spent the night at the house of a man named Rollins near Office Hall. Another story says that they found shelter for the night in the cabin of William Lucas, a Negro, and that the next day the man who was burning with fever, ordered Lucas's son to take him and his companion to the Rappahannock ferry at Port Conway.
All accounts seem to agree that the men came to the Rappahannock in daylight on April 24th, and that they were in a spring wagon driven by a Negro man.
It seems that the ferryman was fishing and wouldn't come ashore for only two fares. At this point three Confederate soldiers who, it has been said, were veterans of Mosby's Raiders and were on their way home, rode up on horseback.