The day was a busy one; for little squads of regulars were sent out on the Maryland Heights to search for the stores accumulated there; and each foraging party was followed by a tail of stragglers from all the volunteers on the ground, who valiantly kept on to the Maryland side of the bridge that crossed the Potomac, and then, their courage oozing out of their fingers and toes both, stopped there and waited for the return of the regulars. On the instant of their arrival, each time fetching a great hay-wagon full of captured goods, tents, picks, spades, pikes, the tag-rag and bobtail party at once set to work to help themselves to the nearest articles, and were soon seen making off homeward with their contraband of war on their backs. The plunder, however, was not confined to the captured property. A strong force of militia soon invaded the armory, and every man helped himself to a rifle and a brace of pistols, and then, tiring of the load, began to chaffer and bargain for their sale. Governor Wise was called on to interfere and preserve the Government property; he came into the little inclosure of the works, and began an eloquent address, but seeing its uselessness, broke off and put his Richmond Grays on guard; and then the distribution of public property was made through the regular channels,--that is, the men inside brought guns and pistols to the men on guard, and they passed them out to their friends beyond, so that the trade went on almost as free as ever.
Night soon came, and it was made hideous by the drunken noise and turmoil of the crowd in the village; matters were made worse, too, by the Governor's order to impress all the horses; and the decent, sober men trudged home rather out of humor with their patriotic sacrifice; while the tipsy and pot-valiant militia fought and squabbled with each other, and only ceased that sport to pursue and hunt down some fugitive negroes, and one or two half-maddened drunken fellows who in their frenzy proclaimed themselves John Brown's men. Tired out at last, the Governor took refuge in the Wager House;--for an hour or two, he had stood on the porch haranguing an impatient crowd as "Sons of Virginia!" Within doors the scene was stranger still. Huddled together in the worst inn's worst room, the Governor and his staff at a table with tallow candles guttering in the darkness, the Richmond Grays lying around the floor in picturesque and (then) novel pursuit of soft planks, a motley audience was gathered together to hear the papers captured at John Brown's house--the Kennedy farm on Maryland Heights--read out with the Governor's running comments. The purpose of all this was plain enough. It was meant to serve as proof of a knowledge and instigation of the raid by prominent persons and party-leaders in the North. The most innocent notes and letters, commonplace newspaper-paragraphs and printed cuttings, were distorted and twisted by the reading and by the talking into clear instructions and positive plots. However, the main impression was of the picturesqueness of the soldiers resting on their knapsacks, and their arms stacked in the dark corners,--of the Governor and his satellites, some of them in brilliant militia array, seated around the lighted table,--and of the grotesque eloquence with which either the Governor or some of his prominent people would now and then burst out into an oratorical tirade, all thrown away on his sleepy auditors, and lost to the world for want of some clever shorthand writer.