"I don't know," was the weary reply. "Things were all in a whirl after I got that note. I remember telling that fellow to say that I would be there without fail. Then it took some time to hurry up here and get my horse, and to write a line to mother; then I did not go straight out Canal Street. There were one or two things that had to be done; but I rode like the devil to get there, and there wasn't a soul that I could see anywhere around the far end of the bridge." "But didn't you go down towards the lake,--to the right hand, I mean?" "To the right? No, of course not," said Amory. "He said to the south; look at the note again and you'll find it; and I had that little compass there on my watch-chain. South was to the left, man, and,--why, it seems to me I rode all night; found myself in town and rode back to the swamps; then gave it up and came home somehow; I don't know. It was all a blur." Then, fortunately, the doctor came back, and, with one glance at Amory's face, motioned to me that enough or more than enough had been said. I bent over Amory and said, with the best intentions in the world of being reassuring, "Remember, do not fret about going North or about anything else of that kind; _that_ is coming out all right." And with the profound conviction that it _was_ coming out all right through his ministration, the recorder of this curious tangle took his leave. CHAPTER XV. Two days elapsed and Frank Amory failed to get better with the rapidity so slight an attack of fever should have permitted; and when it is considered that my language had been, or ought to have been, very reassuring as regarded his other troubles, there seemed to me small warrant for the doctor's ascribing his slow rally to mental perturbations. It was beginning to dawn upon me that the doctor looked upon me as something of a sick-room nuisance ever since my interview with his patient about Peyton, and that only his politeness prevented his saying that that interview had been a decided set-back. At all events, two days passed without my again seeing Mars. He was sleeping when I called, or had had a restless night, and was not to be disturbed. Yet Parker saw him twice, and brought favorable accounts; he seemed to have the luck of getting around at times when Amory was awake, and, being a cavalryman himself, the aide-de-camp had taken charge of the troop and was able to bear Amory daily bulletins of its well-doing. Vinton was rapidly improving and able to sit up a few moments each day. Pauline was radiant with hope and love; and Kitty--whom I had not seen for nearly two days, when we met again at Moreau's--Kitty once more looked pale, anxious, and wistful; I saw it the instant her eyes met mine.