"Do you mean to tell me he _did_ have communication with the doctor?" he asks. "My wife is ready to swear to it," replies mine host. "Her story is simply this: She had come down-stairs just as the doctor returned. She had been sitting with the young lady, who was very nervous and ill at ease while he was away, and had gone into the kitchen at the back of the house to get her a cup of tea. She was startled by a rap at the door, and in walks a man wrapped up in a big military cape. He wore spectacles and a full black beard, and he took off his hat, and spoke like a gentleman. He said he desired to see either Doctor Warren or the young lady at once on business of the utmost importance, and asked her if she would conduct him up by a rear stairway. My wife told him to go around to the office, but he replied that he expected that, and hastened to tell her that it was because there were Union officers in the hallway that he could not go there. There were personal reasons why he must not be seen; and she said to him that a man who looked like an officer and spoke like a gentleman ought not to be afraid to go among his fellows; and he said he was not an officer, and then asked her, suddenly, if she was a friend to the North or the South; and before she could answer they both saw lights dancing about out there in the yard, and he was startled, and said 'twas for him they were searching, and begged her, as she was a woman, not to betray him; he was the young lady's lover, he said in explanation, and had risked much to meet her. And my wife's heart was touched at that, and she showed him a place to hide; and when she went up she heard the young lady sobbing and the old man trying hard to comfort her; and she knocked, but they begged to be left undisturbed until they called, and she went down and told the man; and he was fearfully nervous and worried, she said, especially when told about the crying going on; and he wrote a few lines on a scrap of paper, gave it to her with a little packet, and she took them up to the doctor; and they were just coming out of their room at the moment, and the doctor put the papers in his pocket, and said to her and to me that he begged us to make no mention of his daughter's being there to any one--there were reasons. And her face was hidden in her veil, and he seemed all broken down with anxiety or illness, and said they must have a carriage or something to take them at once to the railway. They probably went back to Baltimore that night, but the doctor took the packet in his pocket; and the man whom you saw come up from under the back piazza, colonel, was the man who sent it him." The provost-marshal is deeply interested. Colonel Putnam sits, in a maze of perplexity, silent and astounded. "The doctor was well known to you, was he not, Putnam?" asked the marshal. The colonel starts, embarrassed and troubled. "No. I never saw him before." "He brought letters to you, didn't he?"