d
spoke like a gentleman ought not to be afraid to go among his fellows;
and he said he was not an officer, and then asked her, suddenly, if she
was a friend to the North or the South; and before she could answer they
both saw lights dancing about out there in the yard, and he was
startled, and said 'twas for him they were searching, and begged her, as
she was a woman, not to betray him; he was the young lady's lover, he
said in explanation, and had risked much to meet her. And my wife's
heart was touched at that, and she showed him a place to hide; and when
she went up she heard the young lady sobbing and the old man trying hard
to comfort her; and she knocked, but they begged to be left undisturbed
until they called, and she went down and told the man; and he was
fearfully nervous and worried, she said, especially when told about the
crying going on; and he wrote a few lines on a scrap of paper, gave it
to her with a little packet, and she took them up to the doctor; and
they were just coming out of their room at the moment, and the doctor
put the papers in his pocket, and said to her and to me that he begged
us to make no mention of his daughter's being there to any one--there
were reasons. And her face was hidden in her veil, and he seemed all
broken down with anxiety or illness, and said they must have a carriage
or something to take them at once to the railway. They probably went
back to Baltimore that night, but the doctor took the packet in his
pocket; and the man whom you saw come up from under the back piazza,
colonel, was the man who sent it him."

The provost-marshal is deeply interested. Colonel Putnam sits, in a
maze of perplexity, silent and astounded.

"The doctor was well known to you, was he not, Putnam?" asked the
marshal.

The colonel starts, embarrassed and troubled.

"No. I never saw him before."

"He brought letters to you, didn't he?"

"No letters. In fact, it wasn't me whom he came to see at all."

"Whom did he want, then?"

"Mr. Abbot," answers the colonel, briefly, and with growing
embarrassment.

"Oh! Abbot knew him, did he?"

"No; he didn't. That is the singular part of it. The more I recall the
interview the more I'm upset."

"Why so?"

"Because he said he had come to see an old friend of his son's whom he
mourned as killed at Seven Pines. He named Abbot, and said he had been
in correspondence with him for a year. As luck would have it, Abbot was
sitting right there beside