He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman strength.
'The Normans,' said these spies to Harold, 'are not bearded on the upper lip as we English are, but are shorn.
"Well, we are surrounded by spies, and our only chance is to pounce upon him before he knows that we are on the way.
The enemy was in plain view beyond the stream, and Shepard and the other spies reported that the Southern army showed no signs of retiring.
"I think we are followed, my lord," he said, "one of Hanno's spies in Manon's household is no doubt seeking to discover who are the Arabs who have paid his master a visit.
Sometimes there would be talk about spies and informers, and then these people would exhaust their vocabulary of abuse, and Peter, of course, would apply every word of it to himself and become wild with anger.
When she spies a mole-hill, she at once sets herself down to watch it; nor will she raise the siege for hours, until the little gentleman in velvet gives signs of his presence by casting up a few grains of earth.
No wonder that Chauvelin's spies had failed to detect, in the apparently brainless nincompoop, the man whose reckless daring and resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest French spies, both in France and in England.
Earlier in the day Stuart, full of enterprise, and almost insensible to fatigue, had crossed the Rappahannock much higher up and at the head of a formidable body of his horsemen, unseen by scouts and spies, was riding around the Union right.