“Maybe your home is in Charleston.”

“I don’t think so, Doctor; I remember being in Charleston, but I don’t remember my home.”

He brought out a map and told me the dates of all the important actions and the names of the officers who had commanded or fought in them in ’61 and ’62, both in Virginia and the West.

* * * * *

“So we have come down to date, Doctor?” I said.

“Yes; but I think that now I ought to go back and tell you something about your own command.”

“Well, sir.”

“There was more fighting while these Richmond movements were in progress.  Where is Fredericksburg?  Here,” looking at the map.

“Well.”

“A Yankee army was there under McDowell, the man who commanded at the battle of Manassas.  We had a small army facing McDowell.  You were in that army; it was under General Anderson—­Tredegar Anderson we call him, to distinguish him from other Andersons; he is president of the Tredegar Iron Works, here in Richmond.  Well, you were facing McDowell.  Now, look here at the map.  McClellan stretched his right wing as far as Mechanicsville—­here, almost north of Richmond; and you were between McClellan and McDowell.  So Anderson had to get out.  Don’t you remember the hot march?”

“Not at all; I don’t think I was there.”

“I thought I’d catch you napping.  I think that when you recover your memory it will be from some little thing that strikes you in an unguarded moment.  Your mind, when consciously active, fortifies itself against your forgotten past, and it may be in a moment of weakness that things will return to you; I shouldn’t wonder if a dream proves to be the beginning.  However, some men have such great strength of will that they can do almost anything.  If ever you get the smallest clew, you ought then and there to determine that you will never let it go.  Your friends may find you any day, but it is strange they have not yet done it They surely must be classing you among the killed.”

[Illustration:  A Lesson In History] [Map of Chesapeake Bay and Environs]

“Do you think that my friends could help me by telling me the past?  Would my memory return if I should find them?”

“No; they could give you no help whatever until you should first find one thing as a starting-point.  Find but one little thing, and then they can show you how everything else is to be associated with that.  Without their help you would have a hard time in collecting things—­putting them together; they would be separate and distinct in your mind; if you remember but one isolated circumstance, it would be next to impossible to reconstruct.  Well, let’s go on and finish; we are nearly at the end, or at the beginning, for you.  Where was I?

“Anderson retreated from Fredericksburg.  When was that?”

“The twenty-fourth of May or twenty-fifth—­say the night of the twenty-fourth.”