Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/79

Rh of Stuart's Cavalry, and now Adjutant-General (it is thought, [sic]), of Hampton's Division. He would give no information!" That officer little knew the adamant he was "up against!"

The romantic story of Venable's adventures after his capture and confinement in the "Old Capitol Prison," in Washington, his dare-devil escape by leaping through the window of the car that was carrying him to "Fort Delaware," as the train slowed up in the dusk of evening near Philadelphia his successful concealment, through the active help of "Southern Sympathizers" in that rabid and envenomed "City of Brotherly Love" (old St. Louis friends of Stuart's were these sympathizers), who not only secreted the young Virginian at great personal risk, but pressed upon him unlimited money for emergencies his cool assumption of the role of an "oil-land promoter" his frequent trips to the Pennsylvania oil-fields to pick up hints, for better playing the "part" his writing his fiancee, Miss Stevens (who had come on to Baltimore with her aunt, to avoid the persecution in St. Louis of "Rebel sympathizers"), begging her to make a few rapid preparations for marriage, following up the letter (characteristically) with a telegram, "Come with your aunt at once" their marriage by the Rev. Dr. W. S. Plummer in his "study," who had been his father's classmate at college, and who was then living in Philadelphia his wife's departure within a few days Southward for Baltimore, while he fared Westward to the oil-fields his making his way gradually, through help of "the underground," to Hagerstown, Maryland his dash, one stormy night, on a fleet horse to an unguarded point on the Potomac the perilous swim across and so back to freedom, and "Old Virginia" all this, as wild as any chapter in Stevenson or Dumas, must be told at another time and in another place. A comrade heard him recount the story soon after his return, and begged him to write it down then, and he half-promised to do so, but, as so often happens, never did.

Just after the disastrous "Retreat," which culminated in the "Surrender" at Appomattox C. H., Mrs. Venable got permission from the Federal authorities to come to Virginia, and after many inevitable hardships reached her husband's home in Prince Edward. The whole of that section had been ravaged by the enemy,