Then the pair fell to work briskly, dusting, arranging, re-arranging and chatting pleasantly.  Pocahontas plied the duster and her brother sorted the books and replaced them on the shelves.  The sun shone in royally, until Pocahontas served a writ of ejectment on his majesty by closing all the shutters; and the sun promptly eluded it by peeping in between the bars.  A little vagrant breeze stole in, full of idleness and mischief, and meddled with the books—­fluttering the leaves of “The Faery Queen,” which lay on its back wide open, lifting up the pages, and flirting them over roguishly as though bent on finding secrets.  The little noise attracted the girl’s attention, and she raised the book and wiped the covers with her duster.  As she slapped it lightly with her hand to get out all the dust, a letter slipped from among the leaves and fell to the floor near Berkeley’s feet.

“Where did this come from?” he inquired, as he picked it up.

“Out of this book,” she answered, holding up the volume in her hand.  “It fell out while I was dusting; some one must have left it in to mark a place.  It must have been in the book for years; see how soiled it is.  Whose is it?”

There is something in the unexpected finding of a stray letter which stimulates curiosity, and Berkeley turned it in his hand to read the address.  The envelope was soiled like the coat of a traveler, and the letter was crumpled as though a hand had closed over it roughly.  The writing was distinct and clerkly.  “Berkeley Mason, Esq., Wintergreen, ——­ Co., Virginia.”  Mr. Mason examined the blurred, indistinct postmark.  “Point”—­something, it seemed to be; and on the other side, Washington, plain enough, and the date, May, 1865.  What letter had been forwarded him from the seat of government in the spring of ’65?  Then memory unfolded itself like a map whose spring is loosened.

Seating himself in an easy chair, he drew the letter from its envelope, unfolding it slowly against his knee.  It was a half-sheet of ordinary commercial paper and the lines upon it numbered, perhaps, a dozen.  Mason winced at sight of the heading as though an old wound had been pressed.  His sister, leaning over the back of his chair, read with him; putting out a hand across his shoulder to help him straighten the page.  It ran thus: 

POINT LOOKOUT,

May —­, 1865.

TO BERKELEY MASON, ESQ., Virginia.

SIR—­A Confederate soldier, now a prisoner of war at this place, giving his name as Temple Mason, is lying in the prison hospital at the point of death.  He was too ill to be sent south with the general transfer, and in compliance with his urgent request, I write again—­the third time, to inform you of his condition.  He can’t last much longer, and in event of his dying without hearing from his friends, he will be buried in the common cemetery connected with the prison, and his identity, in all probability, lost.  This is what he appears to dread, and he entreats that you will come to him, in God’s name, if you are still alive.  The utmost dispatch will be necessary.