as had for days," she
says. "Is this the army doctor?"

"No," he whispers, "a young lady has just fainted down in the next
corridor. Her room adjoins this. Do you know her?"

"Oh, Heaven! I might have known it. Poor child, she is utterly worn out.
This is her father. Will you stay here just a few moments? His son was a
soldier, too, and was killed--and so was her lover--and it has nearly
killed the poor old gentleman. I'll go at once."

Still puzzling over his strange adventure, and thinking only of the
sweet face of the fainting girl, Abbot mechanically takes the fan the
nurse has resigned and slowly sweeps the circling flies away. The
invalid lies on his right side with his face to the wall; but the soft,
curling gray hair ripples under the waves of air stirred by the languid
movement of the fan. The features have not yet attracted his attention.
He is listening intently for sounds from the corridor. His thoughts are
with the girl who has so strangely moved him; so strangely called his
name and looked up into his eyes with a sweet light of recognition in
hers--with a wild thrill of delight and hope in them, unless all signs
deceive him. The color, too, that was rushing into her face, the sudden
storm of emotion that bursts in tears; what meant all this--all this in
a girl whom never before had he seen in all his life? Verily, strange
experiences were these he was going through. Only a week or so before
had not that gray-haired old doctor shown almost as deep an emotion on
meeting him at Frederick? And was he not prostrated when assured of his
mistake, and was it not hard to convince him that the letters to which
he persistently referred were forgeries? Some scoundrel who claimed to
know his son was striving to bleed him for money, probably, and using,
of all others, the name of Paul Abbot. And this poor old gentleman here
had also lost a son, and the sweet, fragile-looking girl a lover! How
peacefully the old man sleeps, thinks Abbot, as he glances a moment
around the room. There are flowers on the table near the open window;
books, too, which, perhaps, she had tried to read aloud. The window
opens out over Pennsylvania Avenue, and the hum and bustle of thronging
life comes floating up from below; a roar of drums is growing louder
every minute, and presently bursts upon the ear as though, just issuing
from a neighboring street, the drummers were marching forth upon the
avenue. Abbot glances at his patient, fearful l