Now the whole course of events, at least all since Bull Run, seems clear if I can but know—­or even believe—­that any man has such superhuman power.  Can I believe it?

Again it is my time for vedette duty.  I relieve Butler.  Not long till dawn, I think.  Far to my left I hear sounds, as if an army is stirring.  My time will be short on post.  Where was I?  Yes; the supernatural power of the Doctor.

What would the possession of such power imply?  To see future events and control them!  Divine power?  Yes, in degree, at least.  But the mind, is it not divine?  I have seen the Doctor do marvellous things.  That letter of my father’s was a mystery....  What!  My father!

The sounds increase; the army is moving; the day is near.

I have a father?  Who is my father?

The thought brings me to my feet.

I had been sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree.  Far in front stretches the dark valley of the Hedgeman River.  Confused noises come from rear and left.  The vedettes will be withdrawn at once, no doubt, for the march begins.  Where is my father?  Where he is there should I be also.  Suddenly light comes; I know that the letter was signed Jones Berwick, Sr.  From what place was it written?  I do not know.  But I know that my father is the man in the tent where the Doctor attends me sick.

I make a step forward.

Owens, on my left a hundred yards, shouts, “Jones, come on; the line is moving back; we are ordered back!”

I open my mouth to reply to him, but think better of it.

I understand.

I am going to my father.

A flood of recollection has poured upon me.

I am the happiest—­no, the most wretched—­man on earth.

XXXIX

REPARATION

“Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,
And welcome home again discarded faith.” 
—­SHAKESPEARE.

My past life had rushed tumultuously upon me.  Oh! the misery of it would have slain me there, a rebel picket, but that balance was made by its all coming.

I must turn my back upon my comrades, but I should go to my father.  The Southern cause must be forsaken, but I should recover my country.

At roll-call in Company H, no voice would henceforth respond to my name distorted.  My comrades would curse my memory.  It must be my duty to battle against friends by whose sides I had faced danger and death.  The glory of the Confederate victories would now bring me pain and not joy.  Oh! the deepness of the woe!

But, on the other hand, I should recover my life and make it complete.  I must atone for the unconscious guilt of a past gorgeous yet criminal—­a past which I had striven to sow with the seeds of a barbarous future.  I should be with the Doctor; I should be myself, and always myself, for I knew that my mind should nevermore suffer a repetition of the mysterious affliction which had changed me.  My malady had departed forever; and with this knowledge there had come upon the glimmering emotions of repressed passion the almost overpowering consciousness that there was a woman in the world.