While constantly observant of those points regarding which I had been despatched, my one overmastering thought during all those hours was the possibility of again meeting with Edith Brennan and proving of some assistance to her. Her greeting of me in the Federal hospital had been so sweetly gracious, so marked with tender sympathy, while the memory of her words, and even more of the look which accompanied them, had so remained with me in encouragement that I longed to encounter her again. God knows what I hoped for, for I knew well it must all inevitably end in despair, yet like the moth I must continue to singe my wings until the flame devoured me. Now, however, as we actually drew near to where I supposed she might be, I felt my earlier courage fast deserting me. Nor was I furnished with even the slightest excuse for pressing on; my orders did not positively compel me to proceed, and nothing appeared along the way to lead me to suppose that harm of any kind threatened that peaceful valley. Everything meeting my eyes evidenced that here, at least, war with its attendant horrors had not come. Totally without the beaten track of those great armies which had battled so fiercely for the Shenandoah, it had been traversed only by a few scouting and foraging parties, and so short had been their stay that even the rail fences remained undisturbed to guard the fields, and nowhere did I note outward signs of devastation. It was Virginia as I recalled it in those old days of peace and plenty, before civil strife had sown the land with dead.