e? How can I avoid being
captured, and brought before the officers as a rebel? I will call for
Dr. Khayme to bear out my words. I will appeal to General Morell and to
General Grover. But all this will take time. The loss of a day, half a
day, an hour, means defeat. Meade's army ought to be falling back now.
To retreat at once may save it--to delay means terrible disaster.

I hasten on, thinking always what I shall say, what I shall do, to make
the generals believe. Oh! if I can but cause a speedy retreat of the
army, a safe retreat from the toils laid for its destruction, I shall be
happy. I will even say that my service as a Confederate was a small
price to pay ... what had the Doctor said? He had said that my infirmity
was a power! He had said that he could imagine cases in which my
peculiar affliction would give great opportunity for serving the
country. What a mind that man has! He is to be feared. I wonder if he
has had active part in what has befallen me.

I keep a straight north course over hill and hollow, through wood and
field, crossing narrow roads that lead nowhere. Farmhouses and fields
and groves and streams and roads I pass in haste, knowing or feeling
that I shall find no help here. Here I shun nothing; here I seek
nothing--beyond this region are the people I want. What can I say? what
can I prove? This is the question that troubles me. If I say that I am a
Union soldier, I must tell the whole truth, and that I cannot do;
besides, it would not be believed. If I say I am a deserter, my
declarations as to Lee's movement will not be taken without suspicion.
What shall I do? If I could but get a horse; if I could but get Federal
clothing; I might hope to find a horse, but to get a blue uniform seems
impossible. I must go as I am, and as I can. If I could but find Dr.
Khayme! But I know not how to find him. If he is yet with the army, he
is somewhere in its rear. Is he yet with the army? Is he yet alive? And
Lydia? My God, what might have happened to her in so many long months!
Yet, I have trust. I shall find the Doctor, and I shall find Lydia, but
I cannot go at once to them; I must lose no time; to seek the Doctor
might be ruin. I must go as fast as possible to the general
headquarters.

To the southeast I hear the boom of a distant gun--and another. I hurry
on. What do they mean by fighting down there?

I keep looking out for a horse, but I see none--none in the fields or
roads or pastures or lots. Thi