k of two or three blocks
before turning in. Fresh air is something I cannot do without. How did
you find us?"

"By hunting up your hackman. I was grievously disappointed at not
finding you at Hastings, where I went first, or here at Willard's. Did
you not get my letters and telegrams?"

"They were forwarded, and came last night."

"Then you moved this morning to avoid me, doctor. Does it mean that I am
to be punished for another man's crime? Guthrie's picture had no such
unfriendly welcome for me, and I do not believe you want to hide her
from me. Tell me what it is that makes Bessie avoid me of her own
accord. Has she heard the truth about the old letters?"

Doctor Warren is silent a moment, looking up into the young soldier's
face. Then he more firmly grasps his hand.

"I do _not want_ to avoid you, Abbot, but it is only natural that now
she should find it hard to meet you. Three days after you left she
caught me fairly, and finding that the letter in my hand was yours, she
noted instantly the difference between the writing and that of the
letters that came to her at home. Something else had roused her
suspicions, and I had to tell her that there had been trickery, and she
would have no half-way explanation. She probed and questioned with a wit
as keen as any lawyer's. She made me confess that that was why I told
her Paul Abbot was dead when I got back to her at Frederick. He was dead
to us. And so, little by little, it all came out, and she was simply
stunned for a while. It made her too ill to admit of our travelling, and
she made me tell her when you were expected back, and bring her here. In
a day or two we will start homeward."

"And meantime I shall have had to start for the front. Doctor Warren,
give her this little package--her own letters. Tell her that I have read
no line of one of these, but that, until I can win for myself letters in
her dear hand there will be no peace or happiness for me. These are the
letters that were sent to you at Frederick, with a few remorseful lines,
from the scoundrel who wrought all the trouble. His original motive was
simply to injure me, in the hope that he might profit by it. He sought
to break an engagement of marriage that existed between me and Miss
Winthrop, of Boston. Before he succeeded in making this breach it is my
belief that he had become so touched and charmed by the letters she
wrote that even his craven heart was turned to see its own baseness. He
had ever