Each of the young man's shoulder straps bore a single bar of silver embroidery. His coat collar displayed the turreted castle within a wreath of laurel, the whole embroidered in gold on a small black velvet oval. Very smart, that uniform of dark blue frock coat and stovepipe trousers.

The young man wiped his mouth with a napkin. He had eaten a delicious meal of beefsteak, browned onions, and fried oysters, which he was just topping off with a dish of blancmange — at ten after ten in the morning. You could order breakfast here until eleven. Washington was a bizarre town. A frightened town, too. Across the Potomac on the Arlington Heights, Brigadier General McDowell was drawing up war plans in the mansion the Lees had abandoned. While awaiting new orders, the young man had hired a horse and ridden over there day before yesterday. He had not been encouraged to find army headquarters a crowded, noisy place with a distinct air of confusion. Awareness that Confederate pickets stood guard not many miles away seemed very real there.

Federal troops had crossed the Potomac and occupied the Virginia side in late May. Regiments from New England crowded the city now. Their presence had partially lifted the burden of terror Washington had borne during the first week after Fort Sumter fell; then, telegraph and even rail connections to the North had been cut for a time. An attack had been expected any hour. The Capitol had been hastily fortified. Some of the relief troops were presently bivouacked there; a military bakery operated in the basement. Tensions had lessened a little, but he still felt the same confusion he'd detected at McDowell's headquarters. Too many new and alarming things were happening, too fast.