und later--that her party expected
to cross there, and she didn't want me to encounter them; and then the
river was too full and they tried a higher ford. And I'd run into them.
Yet I couldn't understand why she planned to cross at Kelly's, anyway,
because there was pretty sure to be a Union outpost on the east bank
there, and she'd have landed right among them. That puzzled me. Who was
the girl, and why on earth was she travelling in that direction, and
where could she be going? I went over that problem again and again, and
couldn't find an answer.

"Meanwhile it was getting late, and the bracing effect of the cold
water of the Rappahannock was wearing off, and I began to feel the
fatigue of an exciting day and a seventy-five-mile ride--on top of
nine other days with little to eat and not much rest. My wet clothes
chilled me, and the last few miles I have never been able to remember
distinctly--I think I was misty in my mind. At any rate, when I got to
headquarters camp I was just about clear enough to guide Zero through
the maze of tents, and not any more, and when the horse stopped with his
nose against the front pole of the general's fly I was unconscious."

I exclaimed, horrified: "It was too much for human nature! You must have
been nearly dead. Did you fall off? Were you hurt?"

"Oh, no--I was all right," he said cheerfully. "I just sat there. But an
equestrian statue in front of the general's tent at 11 P.M. wasn't
usual, and there was a small sensation. It brought out the
adjutant-general and he recognized me, and they carried me into a tent,
and got a surgeon, and he had me stripped and rubbed and rolled in
blankets. They found the despatches in my boots, and those gave all the
information necessary. They found the letter, too, which Stoneman had
given me to hand back to General Ladd, and they didn't understand that,
as it was addressed simply to 'Miss Ladd, Ford Hall,' so they left it
till I waked up. That wasn't till noon the next day."

The General began chuckling contagiously, and I was alive with curiosity
to know the coming joke.

"I believe every officer in the camp, from the commanding general down,
had sent me clothes. When I unclosed my eyes that tent was alive with
them. It was a spring opening, I can tell you--all sorts. Well, when I
got the meaning of the array, I lay there and laughed out loud, and an
orderly appeared at that, and then the adjutant-general, and I reported
to him. Then I got