the War Department seemed to have forgotten him, and he remained quietly in command of the department.  The Military Governor was discharging the active duties of his office, and so it could not be him.  Some persons said General Haskins was the man.  He had been in charge of the defenses north of the Potomac, and knew them well.  But it could not be him, for he had been superseded by General Hardin; and General McDowell McCook ranked both of them; and, as I have before informed you, was placed in command and sent out to see to General Early.

This, my son, was very hard on General McCook, who found himself in a predicament he would willingly have escaped from.  It is no more than right, my son, that I should give you an account of how this general went to the field, and what he found when he got there.

Provided with a pocket full of orders, the general mounted his horse late on Saturday afternoon and set out for the front, over the Fourteenth-street road.  The corpulent engineer I have described in the early part of this history was assigned to General McCook for duty; and this officer, and two sorry-looking orderlies, were all that bore him company.  The corpulent engineer alone knew the military roads, and the location of the forts, which was very fortunate.  As they advanced over the road beyond Meridian Hill, they overtook several straggling generals, each proceeding to the front with a pocket full of orders, and generally accompanied by a single orderly.  Two or three of these generals seemed quite at a loss as to where they were going, or what they were to command.  I have thus explained this matter to you, my son, to show you what a nice way our war authorities had of producing confusion.

When the general and his staff, which I have described above, were well nigh Brightwood, he halted to inquire, of the alarmed negroes and straggling citizens who were wending their way into the city, what news they had of the enemy outside.  But no trustworthy information could he get from any of them.  They all knew that General Early was coming; and that they had left just before he had got to where they lived.  This sort of information was not exactly the kind a general would consider it safe to base his plan of operations on.  Nor was the general any more fortunate in getting information concerning the enemy from a number of squads of cavalry, whose business it seemed to be to ride excitedly to the front and then ride excitedly back again.  Indeed, the whole business of these doughty troopers, it seemed to me, was to increase the alarm and confusion.

It was nearly sundown, the weather was hot and oppressive, and the general was full of troubles.  The worst of these was that he could not find the troops he was sent to command.  Nor could he get any tidings concerning General Early and his rebels.  Hence it was that he concluded, and very naturally, that the enemy would not be within sight of the defenses until morning, and that the city would at least be safe until that time without any more of his generalship.