Some say that when age comes on, a man’s youth is born again. Everything that belonged to the dawn becomes hallowed in the sunset of manhood. It must have been so with Bierce. Old and probably more infirm than he fancied, long written out, ready for sleep, the trumpets of Shiloh and Chickamauga, rusty and silent for fifty years, called him out again and he set out for Mexico, saying little to any one about his plans or intentions. Some believed that he was going down to the Rio Grande as a correspondent. Others said he planned to join the Constitutionalists as a military adviser. Either might have been true, for Bierce was as good an officer as a writer. He knew both games from the roots up. Even the preliminary movements of the man are a little hazy, but apparently he went first to his old home in California and then down to the border. He did not stop there, for in the fall of 1913 he was reported to have crossed into Mexico, and in January his secretary in Washington, Miss Carrie Christianson, received a letter from him postmarked in Chihuahua. Then followed a long silence. Miss Christianson expected to hear again within a month. When no letter came, she wondered, but was not alarmed. Bierce was a man of irregular habits. He was down there in a war-torn country, moving about in the wilderness with armies and bands of insurgents; he might not be able to get a letter through the lines. There was no reason to feel special apprehension. In September, 1914, however, Bierce’s daughter, Mrs. H. D. Cowden of Bloomington, Illinois, decided that something must be amiss, no word having come from her father in eight months. She appealed to the State Department at Washington, saying that she feared for his life. [Illustration: ~~ AMBROSE BIERCE ~~] The Department quickly notified the American chargé d’affaires in Mexico to make inquiries and the War Department shortly afterwards instructed General Funston to send word along his lines and to communicate with the Mexican commanders opposite him, asking for Bierce. The Washington officials soon notified Mrs. Cowden that a search was being made. General Funston also answered that he was proceeding with an inquiry. Again some months elapsed. Finally both the diplomatic and the military forces reported that they had been unable to find Bierce or any trace of him. Probably, it was added, he was with one of the independent rebel commands in the mountains and out of touch with the border or the main forces of the Constitutionalists.