in the summer
of '62, when people were gradually waking to the fact that Richmond was
not so easily taken, or the South so easily conquered.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE DESERTER

There had been a desertion from a regiment on the Potomac. An officer
of inferior rank, but whose position had been such as to make him the
possessor of much valuable information, and whose perfect loyalty had
been for some time suspected, was missing from his command one morning,
and under such circumstances as to leave little doubt that his intention
was to reach the enemy's lines if possible. Long and loud were the
invectives against the traitor, and none were deeper in their
denunciations than Captain Hugh Worthington, as, seated on his fiery war
horse, Rocket, he heard from Irving Stanley the story of Dr. Richards'
disgrace.

"He should be pursued, brought back, and shot!" he said, emphatically,
feeling that he would like much to be one of the pursuers, already on
the track of the treacherous doctor, who skillfully eluded them all, and
just at the close of a warm summer day, when afar, in his New England
home, his Sister Anna was reading, with an aching heart, the story of
his disgrace, he sat in the shadow of the Virginia woods, weary,
footsore and faint with the pain caused from his ankle, sprained by a
recent fall.

He had hunted for Adah until entirely discouraged, and partly as a
panacea for the remorse preying so constantly upon him, and partly in
compliance with Anna's entreaties, he had at last joined the Federal
army, and been sworn in with the full expectation of some lucrative
office. But his unlucky star was in the ascendant. Stories derogatory to
his character were set afloat, and the final result of the whole was
that he found himself enrolled in a company where he knew he was
disliked, and under a captain whom he thoroughly detested, for the fraud
practiced upon himself. In this condition he was sent to the Potomac,
and while on duty as a picket, grew to be on the most friendly terms
with more than one of the enemy, planning at last to desert, and
effecting his escape one stormy night, when the watch were off their
guard. Owing to some mistake, the aid promised by his Rebel friends had
not been extended, and as best he could he was making his way to
Richmond, when, worn out with hunger, watchfulness and fatigue, he sank
down to die, as he believed, at the entrance of some beautiful woods
which skirted the borders of a