Then we had a comforting talk. The mere words were nothing in themselves, it was the spirit of the man. It was such a communion of thought and feeling as I had never had with any one before, except my dear mother--and it seemed at times as though she was present with us. It did me a lot of good. It was as though the sun had come out from a long-clouded sky. In some way, which I can not express in my poor words, I went out leaving my gloom behind me, and feeling in some indefinable way that the “clouds would break with blessings on my head.” With this new feeling of faith or confidence I went to duty again. “Have you had good news?” asked Captain Cross when I met him. “Yes,” I replied; but I made no explanation, for the news was not of the kind he had meant. I met Colonel Burbank at the officers’ mess, and was greeted as usual. I wanted to ask him about the nature of the interviews he had had with Nickerson, at times that I have mentioned, but did not know how. But when we came out and walked through the narrow street together, he kindly took my arm and said, as though he had read my thoughts: “What is it, Lieutenant? What do you want to say to me?” “I have my troubles,” I replied, “but I do not know if they can be made less by asking you to resolve them.” “Possibly not,” he replied gravely, and then in a low tone, “Sometimes a great cause demands and accepts great sacrifices. There are great self-forgetting souls that are so devoted to a cause that they willingly make surrenders greater than life! Can you understand?” What was I to understand by these words? I felt that I could not ask him, for with all his graciousness there was a barrier of reserve, though unexpressed in words, which I felt must not be passed. At parting he gripped my shoulder and said, looking me earnestly in the face, “You don’t ask for explanations--possibly you may never get any.” In this talk neither of us had mentioned Lieutenant Nickerson’s name. I had written to Emily Grant telling her the circumstances of Lieutenant Nickerson’s desertion without, however, a word of explanation, or what I felt or thought about it. In her reply, she wrote as though she knew I was blue and troubled about it, and simply said, “You can not do anything but wait. Time sometimes brings explanations that can not be given otherwise. Miss Rich is deeply troubled; but she will not believe that your friend is a traitor.” Shortly after the talk I had with Colonel Burbank, there was another desertion that hurt me. Muddy mysteriously disappeared for parts unknown. I inquired at the mess sergeant’s, where he sometimes went for a bit of meat or a bone; but he had not been seen there. Neither was he at the colonel’s, where he was often to be seen asleep in a chair. The last I had seen of him he was asleep on my blankets. Several days passed without his appearance, and I was annoyed and perplexed; for he had never absented himself like this before.