“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 into an assortment of the clothes, and did my duty by a pile of food and drink, and I was ready to start back to join my chief.  Except for the letter of General Ladd—­I had to deliver that in person to give the explanation.  General Ladd had been wounded, I found, at Chancellorsville, but would see me.  So off I went to his tent, and the orderly showed me in at once.  He was in bed with his arm and shoulder bandaged, and by his side, looking as fresh as a rose and as mischievous as a monkey, sat a girl with red hair—­Linda Ladd—­Miss Ladd, of Ford Hall—­the old house where I first saw her.  Her father presented me in due form and told me to give her the letter and—­that’s all.”

The General stopped short and regarded me quietly.

“Oh, but—­” I stammered.  “But that isn’t all—­why, I don’t understand—­it’s criminal not to tell the rest—­there’s a lot.”

“What do you want to hear?” he demanded, “I don’t know any more—­that’s all that happened.”

“Don’t be brutal,” I pleaded.  “I want to know, for one thing, how she knew your name.”