orrespondence. Will you wait?"

"Thank you, no. I believed it my duty to show him this despatch, but he
knows as much as, or more than, I do. May I ask if you have any inkling
of Hollins's whereabouts."

"Not even a suspicion. He simply dropped out of sight, and no man in the
army appears to have set eyes on him since the night before Antietam.
Colonel Putnam is investigating his accounts at Point of Hocks, and is
most eager to get him."

Major Abbot turns away with a heavy weight at heart. All of a sudden
there has burst upon him a complication of injustice and mystery, of
annoyance and perplexity that is hard to bear. In some way he feels that
the disappearance of the quartermaster is a connecting link in the chain
of circumstance. He associates him, vaguely, with each and every one of
the incidents which have puzzled him within the month past--with Rix,
with Doctor Warren's coming, with that cold and bitter letter from Miss
Winthrop, and finally with the shock and faintness that overcame this
fair young girl at sight of him.

To his father he has shown Miss Winthrop's letter, and briefly sketched
the visit of Doctor Warren, and the sudden meeting with his daughter the
evening previous. Mr. Abbot is in a whirl of indignation over the
letter, which he considers an insult, but is all aflame with curiosity
about the doctor and the young lady. He has been preparing to return to
Boston this very week, but is now determined to wait until he can see
these mysterious people, who are so oddly mixed up in his son's affairs.
It is with some difficulty that the major prevails upon him not to write
to Miss Winthrop, and overwhelm her with reproaches. That letter must be
answered only by the man to whom it was written, says Abbot, and it is
evident that he does not mean to be precipitate. He has much to think
of, and so drives back to Willard's and betakes himself to his room,
where his father awaits him, and where they are speedily joined by an
official of the secret service, who has a host of singular questions to
ask about Hollins. Some of them have a tendency to make the young major
wonder if he really has been the possessor of eyes and ears, or powers
of discernment, during the past winter. Then come some inquiries about
Rix. Abbot is forced to confess that he knows nothing of his
antecedents, and that he was made quartermaster-sergeant at Hollins's
request, at a time when nobody had a very adequate idea of what his
duties