t 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 you have
gone. My brother thought that I ought to tell you this: it seems that
he and his friend had a strange sympathy for you in what they appear
to know or guess of your relations with that woman, and I think he was
touched by what he thought was your kindness and chivalry to him on
account of his sister. But I do not think he ever knew, or will know,
how great is the task that he has imposed upon me.

"You know now, do you not, WHY I did not speak to you when we first met;
it seemed so impossible to do it in an atmosphere and a festivity that
was so incongruous with the dreadful message I was charged with. And
when I had to meet you later--perhaps I may have wronged you--but it
seemed to me that you were so preoccupied and interested with other
things that I might perhaps only be wearying you with something you
cared little for, or perhaps already knew and had quickly forgotten.

"I had been wanting to say something else to you when I had