Wondering, vaguely uneasy, he read and re-read this note, so unlike Ailsa, so brief, so disturbing in its direct coupling of the people in whose company he had first met Letty Lynden. . . . Yet, on reflection, he dismissed apprehension, Ailsa was too fine a character to permit any change in her manner to humiliate Letty even if, by hazard, knowledge of the unhappy past had come to her concerning the pretty, pallid nurse of Sainte Ursula. As for Arthur Wye and Billy Cortlandt, they were incapable of anything contemptible or malicious. He asked Celia for a pencil and paper, and, propped on his pillows, he wrote: "My darling, I don't exactly understand your message, but I guess it's all right. To answer it: "Billy Cortlandt and Arthur Wye are old New York friends of mine. Their words are better than other people's bonds. Letty Lynden is a sweet, charming girl. I regret that I have not known her years longer than I have. I am sending this in haste to catch Letty's ambulance just departing, though still blocked by artillery passing the main road. Can you come? I love you. "PHILIP BERKLEY." Celia sent her coloured man running after the ambulance. He caught it just as it started on. Berkley, from his window, saw the servant deliver his note to Letty. He had not answered the two questions concerning Letty. He could not. So he had evaded them. Preoccupied, still conscious of the lingering sense of uneasiness, he turned on his pillows and looked out of the window. An enormous cloud of white smoke rose curling from the river, another, another; and boom! boom! boom! came the solid thunder of cannon. The gunboats at the Landing were opening fire; cavalry were leading their horses aboard transports; and far down the road the sun glistened on a long column of scarlet, where the 3rd Zouaves were marching to their boats. The sharpshooters had already begun to trouble them. Their officers ordered them to lie down while awaiting their turn to embark. After a while many of the men sat up on the ground to stretch and look about them, Stephen among the others. And a moment later a conoidal bullet struck him square in the chest and knocked him flat in the dirt among his comrades. CHAPTER XVII The smoke and spiteful crackle of the pickets' fusilade had risen to one unbroken crash, solidly accented by the report of field guns. Ambulances were everywhere driving to the rear at a gallop past the centre and left sections of McDunn's Battery, which, unlimbered, was standing in a cotton field, the guns pointed southward across the smoke rising below.