On each of the other three sides the wide galleries of the three-story brick edifice overlooked the grassy space. He had learned that the hotel had gone into the hands of a new proprietor, but even were it otherwise he hardly feared recognition, although he had been born and reared in the immediate vicinity. At his time of life a few years work great changes. The boy of nineteen was hardly to be identified in the man of twenty-two, with his mustached lips, his broadened shoulders, his three inches of added height, and the composure, confidence, and capability conferred by those years of activity and emergency and responsibility working at high pressure. Some old resident might recognize the Roscoe eye, but he knew he could trust the kindly associations of "auld lang syne" to avoid the sifting of a casual recollection. Besides, this was hardly likely to befall, for the town was an ever shifting kaleidoscope of confused humanity. It was full of strangers,--Federal officers, on service and unattached, on leave of absence, wounded, and their families; special correspondents; hospital nurses; emissaries of the Sanitary Commission; enterprising promoters of all manner of jobs, and the horde of nondescript non-combatants that hangs on the rear of every army, seeking the many methods of securing a windfall from the vast expenditures of money and goods necessary to maintain a great force on a war footing. He was hardly likely to meet any one who had ever known him, or even his father, in his stay at the hotel, which he must contrive by some method to make as short as practicable. Then suddenly a great dismay fell upon him. He lifted his head and gasped as he looked about him for something that was gone! His treacherous memory!--in the prostration of his mental faculties by excitement and fatigue, in the lull of his long slumber, he had forgotten the alias he had registered as his own name on his entrance to the hotel. He thought of half a dozen of the most usual nomenclature, striving to goad his mind to a recognition of each in turn as the one he had selected. He was in desperation. True, he might have an opportunity to study the register and could recognize his own handwriting. But something--anything might occur in the interval in which it might be necessary to give the name he had assumed, and any incongruity with the registered alias would be fatal. Every casual step along the hall on one side, or the gallery on the other, threw him into a sudden tremor as he prefigured a stoppage, a knock, an inquiry--"Are you Mr. Alfred Jones?--here's a note for you. Messenger waits for an answer."