Then Lee remembered how Rhoodie rode. De Buys would have to do better than that to satisfy Jeb Stuart. “You are a horseman, sir?” Lee asked. De Buys nodded in a way that left no doubt. Lee said, “Then I am certain General Stuart will be pleased to make your acquaintance as well. Colonel Mosby also, perhaps, with his partisan command.” By the way de Buys grinned, Lee knew he had judged his man aright.

“General Stuart is by—Fredericksburg?” Wilhelm Gebhard asked.

He turned the soft g of general hard, as a German might have. Behind Lee, one of his aides whispered “Dutchmen” to another. Lee guessed it was Marshall; he seemed most dubious of Rhoodie, and the bulk of Germans in America—including a good many who lived in the Confederacy—were Unionists.

But these men were far too open—and far too strange—to be spies, and in any case, General Meade knew where the Army of Northern Virginia’s cavalry was passing the winter. “Yes, around Fredericksburg,” Lee answered. He would sooner have had Stuart’s troopers closer to hand, but getting horses through the winter was harder and required more land than men did.

Gebhard turned to Rhoodie, asked him something in a language that sounded close to English but was not. Rhoodie replied in the same tongue. Dutchmen they are, Lee thought, In English, Rhoodie said, “He wants to know whether he and de Buys should arrange to go to Fredericksburg to show off our guns, or whether you will call General Stuart here.”

Lee thought about that. At last he said, “With the cavalry spread out on the countryside as it is, the more efficient course would appear to be convening General Stuart and his divisional and brigade commanders here at Orange Court House so they can judge your repeaters for themselves.”