Yes, the broken gun was mine; I have been a Confederate spy.  I am Jones Berwick and I am Berwick Jones.

XXXVIII

IDENTITY

     “Which, is the side that I must go withal? 
     I am with both:  each army hath a hand;
     And, in their rage, I having hold of both,
     They whirl asunder, and dismember me.”

    —­SHAKESPEARE.

I had been in the battle of Manassas, fighting in the ranks of blue soldiers—­yes, I remember the charge and the defeat and the rout.  How vividly I now remember the words—­strange I thought them then—­of Dr. Khayme.  He had said that it might be a spy’s duty to desert even, in order to accomplish his designs.

Had this suggestion been made before the fact?  I am again in a mist.  But what matter?  I had not deserted in reality; I had only pretended to desert.  Yet I think it strange that I cannot remember what Jones Berwick felt when deciding to act the deserter.  Had he found pretended desertion necessary?

Yes, undoubtedly; unless he had passed himself off as a deserter he could not have been received into the Yankee army, and I now knew that I was once in that army.

But why could I not have joined it as a recruit?

Simply because Jones Berwick was in the Confederate army; I could not have easily gone North to enlist.

But could I not have clothed myself at once as a Union soldier, so that there would have been no need of desertion?

No; I could not have answered questions; I should have been asked my regiment; I should have been ordered back to my regiment.  I remember the difficulty I had met with when I joined, or when Berwick Jones joined, Company H. I had been compelled to lay aside the Confederate uniform, and join as a recruit dressed in civilian’s clothing, merely because I could not bear to have questions asked.  So, when I had played the Federal, if I had presented myself in a blue uniform, I could not have answered questions, and the requirement to report to my company would have destroyed my whole plan.

Yet it was just possible that I had succeeded in obtaining civilian’s clothing, and had joined the Federals as a pretended recruit, just as I had joined Company H later.  This was less unlikely when coupled with the thought that possibly my first experience in this course had had some hidden influence on my second.

But why is it that I cannot recall my first service as a Confederate?  The question disturbs me.  My peculiar way of forgetting must be the reason.  When, as Jones Berwick the Confederate, I became Berwick Jones the Federal, there must have come upon my mind a phase of oblivion similar to that which clouded it when I became a Confederate again.

Yet this explanation is weak.  No such thing could occur twice just at the critical time ... unless ... some power, mysterious and profound....  What was Dr. Khayme in all this?