est the noise should wake
him, but he sleeps the sleep of exhausted nature, and the soldier in his
temporary nurse prompts him to steal to the window and look down upon
the troops. They are marching south, along Fourteenth Street--a regiment
going over to the fortifications beyond the Long Bridge, and, after a
glance, Abbot steps quickly back. On the table nearest the window lies a
dainty writing-case, a woman's, and the flap is down on a half-finished
letter. On the letter, half disclosed, is the photograph of an officer.
It is strangely familiar as Abbot steps towards it. Then--the roar of
the drums seems deafening; the walls of the little room seem turning
upside down; his brain is in some strange and sudden whirl; but there in
his hands he holds, beyond all question--his own picture--a photograph
by Brady, taken when he was in Washington during the previous summer. He
has not recovered his senses when there is an uneasy movement at the
bed. The gray-haired patient turns wearily and throws himself on the
other side, and now, though haggard and worn with suffering, there is no
forgetting that sorrow-stricken old face. In an instant Major Abbot has
recognized his visitor of the week before. There before him lies Doctor
Warren. Who--_who_ then is _she_?

VI.

Sitting by the open window and looking out over the bustling street
Major Abbot later in the evening is trying to collect his senses and
convince himself that he really is himself. "It never rains but it
pours," and events have been pouring upon him with confusing rapidity.
Early in the summer he had noted an odd constraint in the tone of the
few letters that came from Miss Winthrop. That they were few and far
between was not in itself a matter to give him much discomfort. From
boyhood he had been accustomed to the household cry that at some time in
the future--the distant future--Viva Winthrop was to be his wife. He had
known her quite as long as he had been conscious of his own existence,
and the relations between the families were such as to render the
alliance desirable. Excellent friends were the young people as they grew
to years of discretion, and, in the eyes of parents and intimate
acquaintances, no formal betrothal was ever necessary, simply because
"it was such an understood thing." For more than a year previous to the
outbreak of the war, however, Miss Winthrop was in Europe, and much of
the time, it was said, she had been studying. So had Mr.