me at home for months on that idea, but the
fact seems as far off now as ever. I should go straight through without
stopping, if I had a pass."

"Ho!" exclaimed the man, softly, with pitying amusement. "Certainly, I
understand you would try to do so. But, my dear madam, you would find
yourself very much mistaken. Suppose, now, we should let you through our
lines. You'd be between two fires. You'd still have to get into the
rebel lines. You don't know what you're undertaking."

She smiled wistfully.

"I'm undertaking to get to my husband."

"Yes, yes," said the officer, pulling his handkerchief from between two
brass buttons of his double-breasted coat and wiping his brow. She did
not notice that he made this motion purely as a cover for the searching
glance which he suddenly gave her from head to foot. "Yes," he
continued, "but you don't know what it is, ma'am. After you get through
the _other_ lines, what are you going to do _then_? There's a perfect
reign of terror over there. I wouldn't let a lady relative of mine take
such risks for thousands of dollars. I don't think your husband ought to
thank me for giving you a pass. You say he's a Union man; why don't he
come to you?"

Tears leaped into the applicant's eyes.

"He's become too sick to travel," she said.

"Lately?"

"Yes, sir."

"I thought you said you hadn't heard from him for months." The officer
looked at her with narrowed eyes.

"I said I hadn't had a letter from him." The speaker blushed to find her
veracity on trial. She bit her lip, and added, with perceptible tremor:
"I got one lately from his physician."

"How did you get it?"

"What, sir?"

"Now, madam, you know what I asked you, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yes. Well, I'd like you to answer."

"I found it, three mornings ago, under the front door of the house where
I live with my mother and my little girl."

"Who put it there?"

"I do not know."

The officer looked her steadily in the eyes. They were blue. His own
dropped.

"You ought to have brought that letter with you, ma'am," he said,
looking up again; "don't you see how valuable it would be to you?"

"I did bring it," she replied, with alacrity, rummaged a moment in a
skirt-pocket, and brought it out. The officer received it and read the
superscription audibly.

"'Mrs. John H----.' Are you Mrs. John H----?"

"That is not the envelope it was in," she replied. "It was not directed
at all. I put it into that envelope me