compelled to bear that reputation.  He remembered his coldness to Miss Faulkner in the first days of their meeting, and her effect upon his subalterns.  Why had she selected him from among them—­when she could have modeled the others like wax to her purposes?  Why?  And yet with the question came a possible answer that he hardly dared to think of—­that in its very vagueness seemed to fill him with a stimulating thrill and hopefulness.  He quickened his pace.  He would take the letter, and yet be master of himself when the time came to open it.

That time came three days later, in his tent at Three Pines Crossing.  As he broke open the envelope, he was relieved to find that it contained no other inclosure, and seemed intended only for himself.  It began abruptly:—­

“When you read this, you will understand why I did not speak to you when we met last night; why I even dreaded that you might speak to me, knowing, as I did, what I ought to tell you at that place and moment—­something you could only know from me.  I did not know you were in Washington, although I knew you were relieved; I had no way of seeing you or sending to you before, and I only came to Mrs. Boompointer’s party in the hope of hearing news of you.

“You know that my brother was captured by your pickets in company with another officer.  He thinks you suspected the truth—­that he and his friend were hovering near your lines to effect the escape of the spy.  But he says that, although they failed to help her, she did escape, or was passed through the lines by your connivance.  He says that you seemed to know her, that from what Rose—­the mulatto woman—­told him, you and she were evidently old friends.  I would not speak of this, nor intrude upon your private affairs, only that I think you ought to know that I had no knowledge of it when I was in your house, but believed her to be a stranger to you.  You gave me no intimation that you knew her, and I believed that you were frank with me.  But I should not speak of this at all—­for I believe that it would have made no difference to me in repairing the wrong that I thought I had done you—­only that, as I am forced by circumstances to tell you the terrible ending of this story, you ought to know it all.

“My brother wrote to me that the evening after you left, the burying party picked up the body of what they believed to be a mulatto woman lying on the slope.  It was not Rose, but the body of the very woman—­the real and only spy—­whom you had passed through the lines.  She was accidentally killed by the Confederates in the first attack upon you, at daybreak.  But only my brother and his friend recognized her through her blackened face and disguise, and on the plea that she was a servant of one of their friends, they got permission from the division commander to take her away, and she was buried by her friends and among her people in the little cemetery of Three Pines Crossing, not far from where