Come to me quickly. I am mortally wounded, and it is very necessary for me to see you before I die—not for my sake, for you’d rejoice to see me in hell, but for the sake of others and for your own sake—though for yourself you don’t often care much. I’m in a farm-house hospital three miles south of Harper’s Ferry on the Martinsburg road. My messenger will guide you. The Federals have possession, of course, but the bearer of this note has a safe-conduct for you. Of course, this might be a trick, but it is not. On the word of a gambler (and you know what that means) I am playing fair this time. You are a brave enough man to risk this thing anyhow. Come! This note bore no signature, but Owen Kilgariff knew the hand that had written it. That handwriting had sent him to jail once upon a time. He had not forgotten. He was not given to forgetting. He summoned the messenger who had brought him the note. “You have a safe-conduct for me, I believe?” he asked. “Yes, Captain,” and he produced the document. “How did you manage to pass our picket lines? Did you come under a flag of truce?” “No. That would have taken time, and there is no time to be wasted. Major Campbell is terribly wounded. I live in these parts. I ain’t a soldier, you know. So I slipped through the lines.” For a moment Kilgariff regarded the fellow with indignant contempt. Then the indignation passed, and the contempt was intensified in his expression. Presently he said:— “You low-lived, contemptible hound, I can’t make up my mind even to be angry with you. You and your kind are the pest in this war. You haven’t character enough to take sides. You serve either side at will, and betray both with jaunty indifference. Now listen to me. Within twenty-four hours I shall see Major Campbell, who sent me this note. But I shall not go to him under the safe-conduct you have brought.” With that, Kilgariff tore the paper to bits and scattered its fragments to the night wind. “I shall order you sent to the guard-house and manacled, until General Early shall have decided what to do with you. He doesn’t like your sort.” The man fell at once into panic and pleaded for his life. “Oh, what will become of me?” he piteously moaned. “I really don’t know,” answered Kilgariff, quite as if the question had related to the disposition to be made of some inanimate object. “General Early may have you shot at sunrise, or he may decide to hang you instead. I don’t at all know, and after all it makes no real difference. The one death is about as painless as the other, and as for the matter of disgrace, of course you are hopelessly incapable of considering that. Perhaps—oh, well, I don’t know. General Early may conclude to turn you loose as a creature too contemptible to be seriously dealt with.” “God grant that he may!” said the man, with fervour, as the guards took him away.