Federal camp until he had got the
information needed, and had returned to the Confederates before he had
been wounded by the shell.

So, all these fancies had resulted in worse than nothing; every effort
I had made, on these lines, had but entangled me more. That Jones was a
Confederate spy, was highly probable; this absurd notion of a double had
drawn me away from the right track; he was a double, it is true, but
only on the surface; he was a Confederate acting the Federal.

Jones interests me intensely. There is something extraordinary about
him. No man that I ever saw or heard of seems to possess his capacity to
interest me. Yet his only peculiarity is that he changes clothing. No,
not his only one; he has another: he is absolutely ubiquitous.

That he has some close relationship with me is clear. Why clear? Just
because I cannot get rid of him? Is that a reason? Nothing is clear. My
head is not clear. All this mysterious Jones matter may be delusion. Dr.
Khayme is fact, and Lydia is fact, and Willis; but as to this Jones, or
these Joneses, I doubt. Doubt is not relief. Jones remains. Wherever I
turn I find him. He will not down. If he is a fact, he must be the most
important person related to my life. More so than Lydia?

What is Jones to me? My mind confesses defeat and struggles none the
less. Could he be a brother? Can it be possible, after all, that my name
is B. Jones? Anything seems possible. Yet a thought shows me that this
supposition is untenable. If I am Berwick Jones, and the spy was my
brother, I should have heard of him long ago.

Why? why should I hear of him, when I could not hear of myself? The
Confederate army may have had a score of spies named Jones, and I had
never heard of one of them.

But if he had been my brother, _he_ would have hunted _me_, and would
have found me! That was it.

This thought was more reasonable--but ... he might have been killed!

He must have been killed by the shell on the hill ... yes ... that is
why I can trace him no farther. I have never seen him since. Why had I
at first assumed that he had been wounded only? I see that I assumed too
much--or too little. I had seen him under the fire, and had seen him no
more; that was all.

Yet I knew absolutely and strangely that Jones had not been killed.

It is certain that the memory, in retracing a succession of events, does
not voluntarily take the back track; it goes over the ground again, just
as the events succee