governor," and "to spread on his route devastation and
terror."[323] In this entire scheme, doubtless, Tarleton would have
succeeded, had it not been that as he and his troopers, on that fair
Sabbath day, were hurrying past the Cuckoo tavern in Louisa, one
Captain John Jouette, watching from behind the windows, espied them,
divined their object, and mounting a fleet horse, and taking a shorter
route, got into Charlottesville a few hours in advance of them, just
in time to give the alarm, and to set the imperiled legislators
a-flying to the mountains for safety.

Then, by all accounts, was witnessed a display of the locomotive
energies of grave and potent senators, such as this world has not
often exhibited. Of this tragically comical incident, of course, the
journal of the House of Delegates makes only the most placid and
forbearing mention. For Monday, June 4, its chief entry is as follows:
"There being reason to apprehend an immediate incursion of the enemy's
cavalry to this place, which renders it indispensable that the General
Assembly should forthwith adjourn to a place of greater security;
resolved, that this House be adjourned until Thursday next, then to
meet at the town of Staunton, in the county of Augusta,"--a town
thirty-nine miles farther west, beyond a chain of mountains, and only
to be reached by them or their pursuers through difficult passes in
the Blue Ridge. The next entry in the journal is dated at Staunton, on
the 7th of June, and, very properly, is merely a prosaic and
business-like record of the reassembling of the House according to the
adjournment aforesaid.[324]

But as to some of the things that happened in that interval of panic
and of scrambling flight, popular tradition has not been equally
forbearing; and while the anecdotes upon that subject, which have
descended to our time, are very likely decorated by many tassels of
exaggeration and of myth, they yet have, doubtless, some slight
framework of truth, and do really portray for us the actual beliefs of
many people in Virginia respecting a number of their celebrated men,
and especially respecting some of the less celebrated traits of those
men. For example, it is related that on the sudden adjournment of the
House, caused by this dusty and breathless apparition of the speedful
Jouette, and his laconic intimation that Tarleton was coming, the
members, though somewhat accustomed to ceremony, stood not upon the
order of their going, but wen