I thought I was among my friends, and very imprudently neglected ordinary precautions for-avoiding difficulties. During the eight or nine months I had been wearing male attire, I had, as the reader is aware, seen a great deal of very hard service. My clothing was well worn, and my apparatus for disguising my form was badly out of order; and the result was, that I scarcely presented as creditable a manly appearance as I did upon the occasion of my last visit to New Orleans. I had, too, by this time become so much accustomed to male attire that I ceased to bear in my mind, constantly, the absolute necessity for preserving certain appearances, and had grown careless about a number of little matters that, when attended to properly, aided materially in maintaining my incognito. In addition to all this, I was in very low spirits, if not absolutely sick, when I reached New Orleans, and was not in a mood to play my part in the best manner.
My Arrest as a Spy.
I had not been in the city very long before it was noted by prying people that there was some mystery about me, and for any one to have a mystery just then, was equivalent to falling under the ban of both military and civic authorities. I, of course, imagining no evil, was not prepared for a demonstration against me, and was accordingly thunderstruck when I was arrested on the charge of being a spy, and taken before the provost marshal.
Terror, dismay, and indignation struggled for mastery with me when this outrage, as I considered it, was perpetrated. My great secret, I feared, was now on the point of being discovered; and if it was discovered, the probabilities were that I would be unable any longer to continue the career I had marked out for myself. I was enraged at the idea of being charged with acting as a spy, and of having my patriotism doubted after all I had done to promote the cause of Southern independence; and at the same time I appreciated the difficulties and dangers of the situation, and puzzled my brain to devise a plan for getting myself out of a very ugly scrape. Reviewing the matter very rapidly in my own mind, I determined that the best, if not the only plan, was to present a bold front, and to challenge my accusers to prove anything against me, reserving a revelation of my identity as a last alternative.
