son
work; the idea is preposterous! What does it mean? Can it mean any more
than that you were known at one time as Jones Berwick and at another
time as Berwick Jones? It is insanity to think that you are two persons
at once. Have you imagined that now, while you are a Confederate again,
there is also a you in the Yankee army? When your connection with the
Confederates was interrupted you were received by the Federals as Jones
Berwick; the J.B. on the gunstock shows that well enough; but when you
became a Confederate again, your name was reversed because of
that diary!

I took out the diary. It was too dark to read, but I knew every word of
the few lines in it,--B. Jones, on the fly-leaf.

And now I recall that the Doctor had told me to write in the little
book.... What was his purpose? To deceive the enemy in case I should be
taken? Yes.

But--I was going to become a Confederate again!

Did the Doctor know that?

Yes; he knew it. At least he provided for such a change; the words he
dictated were for a Confederate's diary. He knew it? Yes; he helped me
on with the Confederate uniform!

Then why should he think that additional effort--the diary--was
required to make Confederates believe a Confederate a Confederate?

Could I not at once have named my original company and its officers? Why
this child's play of the diary?

I studied hard this phase of the tangle.

Perhaps the Doctor wanted me to be able to prove myself to the first
party of Confederates I should meet. Yes; that is reasonable. I might
have been subjected to much embarrassing questioning--and to
detention--but for something on my person to give substance to my
statement. The Doctor was far-sighted. He had protected me.

But how could I make a statement? How could I know what to say to a
party of Confederates? I laughed at the question, and especially at the
thought which had caused it. I had actually forgotten, for the moment,
that I was a real Confederate, and had begun to imagine that I had been
a Federal trying to get into the Confederate lines, and whom the Doctor
was helping to do so.

But, was the Doctor a Confederate? He must have been a Confederate. If
so, what was he, too, doing in the Federal camp? He, too, a spy? He and
I were allies? Possibly.

But is it not more likely that he was deceived in me? Did he not think
me a Union soldier? If so, he thought that he was helping me to play the
spy in the interest of the Federals.

What,