ead the account. Have you got
proof of what you say?"

"Perhaps no proof that would hold in a court of law," Vincent replied,
"but proof enough to make it an absolute certainty to my mind."

Vincent then gave an account of their escape, and of the anonymous
denunciation of himself and Dan.

"Now," he said, "no one but Dan knew of the intended escape, no one knew
what clothes he had purchased, no one could possibly have known that I
was to be disguised as a preacher and Dan as my servant. Therefore the
information must have been given by Jackson."

"I have not the least doubt but that the blackguard did give it,
Wingfield; but there is no proof."

"I consider that there is a proof--an absolute and positive proof,"
Vincent asserted, "because no one else could have known it."

"Well, you see that, as a matter of fact, the other officer did know it,
and might possibly have given the information."

"But why should he? The idea is absurd. He had never had a quarrel with
me, and he owed his liberty to me."

"Just so, Wingfield. I am as certain that it was Jackson as you are,
because I know the circumstances; but you see there is no more absolute
proof against one man than against the other. It is true that you had
had a quarrel with Jackson some two years before, but you see you had
made it up and had become friends in prison--so much so that you
selected him from among a score of others in the same room to be the
companion of your flight. You and I, who know Jackson, can well believe
him guilty of an act of gross ingratitude--of ingratitude and treachery;
but people who do not know would hardly credit it as possible that a man
could be such a villain. The defense he would set up would be that in
the first place there is no shadow of evidence that he more than the
other turned traitor. In the second place he would be sure to say that
such an accusation against a Confederate officer is too monstrous and
preposterous to be entertained for a moment; and that doubtless your
negro, although he denies the fact, really chattered about his doings to
the negroes he was lodging with, and that it was through them that
someone got to know of the disguise you would wear. We know that it
wasn't so, Wingfield; but ninety-nine out of every hundred white men in
the South would rather believe that a negro had chattered than that a
Confederate officer had been guilty of a gross act of treachery and
ingratitude."

Vincent was silent. H