sit down, Armstrong. I want to
speak with you a moment." Yet it was the colonel who was the first to
break the silence.

"May I ask if you have had time to look at any of the letters, sir?"

"Do I look as though I had time to do _any_-thing?" said the chief,
dropping his hands and uplifting a lined and haggard face, yet so
refined. "Anything but work, work, morn, noon and night. The mass of
detail one has to meet here is something appalling. It weighs on me like
a nightmare, Armstrong. No, I was worn out the night after the package
reached me. When next I sought it the letters were gone."

"How long was that, General?"

Again the weary hands, with their long, tapering fingers, came up to the
old soldier's brow. He pondered a moment. "It must have been the next
afternoon, I think, but I can't be sure."

"And you had left them----?"

"In the inside pocket of that old overcoat of mine, hanging there on the
rear tent pole," was the answer, as the General turned half-round in his
chair and glanced wistfully, self-reproachfully thither.

Armstrong arose, and going to the back of the tent, made close
examination. The canvas home of the chief was what is known as the
hospital tent, but instead of being pitched with the ordinary ridgepole
and uprights, a substantial wooden frame and floor had first been built
and over this the stout canvas was stretched, stanch and taut as the head
of a drum. It was all intact and sound. Whoever filched that packet made
way with it through the front, and that, as Armstrong well knew, was kept
tightly laced, as a rule, from the time the General left it in the
morning until his return. It was never unlaced except in his presence or
by his order. Then the deft hands of the orderlies on duty would do the
trick in a twinkling. Knowing all this, the colonel queried further:

"You went in town, as I remember, late that evening and called on the
Primes and other people at the Palace. I think I saw you in the supper
room. There was much merriment at your table. Mrs. Garrison seemed to be
the life of the party. Now, you left your overcoat with the boy at the
cloak stand?"

"No, Armstrong, that's the odd part of it. I only used the cape that
evening. The coat was hanging at its usual place when I returned late,
with a mass of new orders and papers. No! no! But here, I must get back
to the office, and what I wished you to see was that poor boy's letter.
What can you hope with a nature like that t