saw him again, and many times when thinking of the
circumstances, I wondered if he was a confederate spy. He was a good
soldier and did not leave to shirk danger, for he had been under fire
and demonstrated his courage. He could hardly have disappeared so
completely unless he went into the enemy's lines, and, if he did that,
must have done it purposely.[6]

There is no doubt that in the early years of the war the enemy's means
of getting information were far superior to ours and there is still less
doubt that not only the army, but Washington, and even the War
Department were filled with spies. Probably no union general ever
succeeded in outwitting these confederate emissaries so completely as
did General Sheridan. He told me in Petersburg, after the fall of
Richmond, that he had Early's spies at his headquarters in Winchester
all through the winter of 1864-65--they having come to him under the
pretense of being deserters--knowing them to be such, but pretending
that he did not distrust them, and in the spring, before the grand
forward movement, he sent them off on a false scent, with wrong
information for their chief--Early. With two of these, in order to keep
up the deception, he was obliged to send one genuine union scout, who
was arrested as a spy, in Lynchburg, and would have been hung, if the
sudden closing of hostilities had not suspended sentence. This man's
name was M.B. Medes, a trooper of the Sixth Michigan cavalry, then on
detached service as a scout at Sheridan's headquarters, and never, since
his miraculous escape, has he been able to talk about the experiences of
that last scout without a fit of nervous prostration. In a letter
written to me several years ago, he said:

"I don't know why it is, but I can never talk of my adventures and
narrow escapes while acting as scout and spy, that I do not break
down completely and shake as though I had a hard chill."

CHAPTER X

FIELD SERVICE IN VIRGINIA

It was toward the last of February, 1863, that the first order to move
came. I had been down to the city and, returning about ten o'clock in
the evening, not dreaming of any change from the usual order of things,
was surprised to find all bustle and confusion, where a few hours before
it had been quiet and serene. The regiment was to march at two o'clock
in the morning, and preparations for departure were well under way.
Three days' cooked rations and forty rounds of ammunition to the man
we