then? Why, then the Doctor was, after all, a surgeon in the Union
army.

But I knew that the Doctor was thoroughly opposed to war; he would not
fight; he took no side; he even argued with me ... God! what was it that
he argued? And what in me was he arguing against? He had contended--I
remember it--that the war would destroy slavery, and that was what he
wanted to be done; and I had contended that the Union was pledged by the
Constitution to protect slavery, and all I wanted was the preservation
of the Union.

A cold shudder came through me.

In an instant I could see better. Such talk had been part of my plan. I
had even succeeded in blinding the Doctor. Yet this thought gave little
pleasure. To have deceived the Doctor! I had thought him too wise to
allow himself to be deceived.

Yet any man may be cheated at times. But, had I lent myself to a course
which had cheated Dr. Khayme? This was hard to believe. I became
bewildered again. No matter which way I looked, there was a tangle. I
have not got to the bottom of this thing.

Of two things one must be true: first, Dr. Khayme is a Confederate and
my ally; second, I have been such a skilful spy that I have deceived him
with all his wisdom and all my reluctance to deceive him. Which of these
two things is true?

Let me look again at the first. I am sure that the Doctor was in some
way attached to the army. What army? I know. I know not only that it was
the Union army, but I know even that it was McClellan's army. I remember
now the Doctor's telling me about movements that McClellan would make.
These things happened in McClellan's army while I was a spy. To suppose
that the Doctor was my ally comports with his giving me information of
McClellan's movements. He was a surgeon, and, of course, a Confederate;
he certainly was from Charleston, and must have been a Confederate. But,
on the other hand, I remember clearly his great hostility to slavery,
and his hostility, no less great, to war. From this it seems that he
could not have been a Confederate.

Let me look at the second. I am sure that I was a spy and that I was in
McClellan's army. I am equally sure that the Doctor knew that I was a
spy. He had even argued in favour of my work as a spy. How, then, could
I deceive him? There is but one answer: he thought me a Union spy, and
that I was to go into the Confederate lines to get information, when the
opposite was true.

Now the first proposition seems clearly cont