on as this unknown writer evidently did. His only crime
seems to have been a hesitancy about giving his own name."

"And a scoundrelly larceny of that of a better man in every way. No,
doctor. The honor of my regiment demands that he be run down and brought
to justice; and you must not withhold the only proof with which we can
reach him. Promise me!"

"I--I will think. I am all unstrung now, my dear sir! Pray do not press
me! If it was not Mr. Abbot, who could it have been? Who else could have
known him?"

"Why, Doctor Warren, there are probably fifty Harvard men in this one
regiment--or were at least," says the colonel, sadly, "up to a month
ago. Cedar Mountain, Bull Run, South Mountain, and Antietam have left
but a moiety. Most of our officers are graduates of the old college, and
many a man was there. I dare say I could have found a dozen who well
knew your son. In the few words I had with Abbot, he told me he
remembered that there had been some talk among the officers last July
after your son was killed. Some one saw the name in the papers, and said
that it must have been Warren of the class of '58, and our Captain
Webster, who was killed at Manassas, was in that class and knew him
well. Abbot said he remembered him, by sight, as a sophomore would know
a senior, but had never spoken to him. Anybody hearing all the talk
going on at the time we got the news of Seven Pines could have woven
quite a college history out of it--and somebody has."

"Ah, colonel! There is still the fact of the photograph, and the letters
that were written about Guthrie all last winter--long before Seven
Pines."

The colonel looks utterly dejected, too; he shakes his head, mournfully.
"That troubles Abbot as much as it does me. Fields, gallant fellow, was
our adjutant then, and he and Abbot were close friends. He could hardly
have had a hand in anything beyond the photograph and letter which, you
tell me, were sent to the Soldier's Aid Society in town. I remember the
young fellows were having quite a lot of fun about their Havelocks when
we lay at Edwards's Ferry--but Fields was shot dead, almost the first
man, at Cedar Mountain, and of the thirty-five officers we had when we
crossed the Potomac the first time, only eleven are with the--th to-day.
Abbot, who was a junior second lieutenant then, is a captain now, by
rights, and daily expecting his promotion. I showed you several letters
in his hand, and they, you admit, are utterly unlike