ere he had been told that Wyndham had quartered himself, but
here he received the disappointing news that the Englishman had gone
to Washington that afternoon.

A few minutes later, however, Joe Nelson came up with a prisoner, an
infantryman who had just been relieved from sentry duty at General
Stoughton's headquarters, who said that there had been a party there
earlier in the evening and that Stoughton and several other officers
were still there. Mosby, still disappointed at his failure to secure
Wyndham, decided to accept Stoughton in his place. Taking several men,
he went at once to the house where the prisoner said Stoughton had his
headquarters.

* * * * *

Arriving there, he hammered loudly on the door with a revolver butt.
An upstairs window opened, and a head, in a nightcap, was thrust out.

"What the devil's all the noise about?" its owner demanded. "Don't you
know this is General Stoughton's headquarters?"

"I'd hoped it was; I almost killed a horse getting here," Mosby
retorted. "Come down and open up; dispatches from Washington."

In a few moments, a light appeared inside on the first floor, and the
door opened. A man in a nightshirt, holding a candle, stood in the
doorway.

"I'm Lieutenant Prentiss, on General Stoughton's staff. The general's
asleep. If you'll give me the dispatches ..."

Mosby caught the man by the throat with his left hand and shoved a
Colt into his face with his right. Dan Thomas, beside him, lifted the
candle out of the other man's hand.

"And I'm Captain Mosby, General Stuart's staff. We've just taken
Fairfax Courthouse. Inside, now, and take me to the general at once."

The general was in bed, lying on his face in a tangle of bedclothes.
Mosby pulled the sheets off of him, lifted the tail of his nightshirt
and slapped him across the bare rump.

The effect was electric. Stoughton sat up in bed, gobbling in fury. In
the dim candlelight, he mistook the gray of Mosby's tunic for blue,
and began a string of bloodthirsty threats of court-martial and firing
squad, interspersed with oaths.

"Easy, now, General," the perpetrator of the outrage soothed. "You've
heard of John Mosby, haven't you?"

"Yes; have you captured him?" In the face of such tidings, Stoughton
would gladly forget the assault on his person.

Mosby shook his head, smiling seraphically. "No, General. He's
captured you. I'm Mosby."

"Oh my God!" Stoughton sank back on the pillo