Lieutenant P________, of the Pennsylvania __th, was a very fresh,
bright-looking young man, lying in bed from the effects of a recent
injury received in action.   A grape-shot, after passing through a post
and a board, had struck him in the hip, bruising, but not penetrating or
breaking.   He had good news for me.

That very afternoon, a party of wounded officers had passed through Harrisburg, going East.  He had conversed in the bar-room of this hotel with one of them, who was wounded about the shoulder (it might be the lower part of the neck), and had his arm in a sling.  He belonged to the Twentieth Massachusetts; the Lieutenant saw that he was a Captain, by the two bars on his shoulder-strap.  His name was my family-name; he was tall and youthful, like my Captain.  At four o’clock he left in the train for Philadelphia.  Closely questioned, the Lieutenant’s evidence was as round, complete, and lucid as a Japanese sphere of rock-crystal.

Te Deum LAUDAMUS!  The Lord’s name be praised!  The dead pain in the semilunar ganglion (which I must remind my reader is a kind of stupid, unreasoning brain, beneath the pit of the stomach, common to man and beast, which aches in the supreme moments of life, as when the dam loses her young ones, or the wild horse is lassoed) stopped short.  There was a feeling as if I had slipped off a tight boot, or cut a strangling garter,—­only it was all over my system.  What more could I ask to assure me of the Captain’s safety?  As soon as the telegraph office opens tomorrow morning we will send a message to our friends in Philadelphia, and get a reply, doubtless, which will settle the whole matter.

The hopeful morrow dawned at last, and the message was sent accordingly.  In due time, the following reply was received:  “Phil Sept 24 I think the report you have heard that W [the Captain] has gone East must be an error we have not seen or heard of him here M L H”

De profundis CLAMAVI!  He could not have passed through Philadelphia without visiting the house called Beautiful, where he had been so tenderly cared for after his wound at Ball’s Bluff, and where those whom he loved were lying in grave peril of life or limb.  Yet he did pass through Harrisburg, going East, going to Philadelphia, on his way home.  Ah, this is it!  He must have taken the late night-train from Philadelphia for New York, in his impatience to reach home.  There is such a train, not down in the guide-book, but we were assured of the fact at the Harrisburg depot.  By and by came the reply from Dr. Wilson’s telegraphic message:  nothing had been heard of the Captain at Chambersburg.  Still later, another message came from our Philadelphia friend, saying that he was seen on Friday last at the house of Mrs. K________, a well-known Union lady in Hagerstown.  Now this could not be true, for he did not leave Keedysville until Saturday; but the name of the lady furnished a clew by which we could