"Good! I'll try to see that your spare time passes pleasantly. Several new military pictures are to be exhibited at my club, and I'll be glad to have you see them, if you find the time. I received several invitations in blank to-day; let me give you one." Phil drew some papers from his pocket, and began to search for the invitations, holding his letters and other papers so that the light might strike them fairly. Suddenly he was conscious of a start. He looked up inquiringly, and saw Jermyn gazing intently at a letter which Phil held in his hand. "Ah?" said Phil, quickly, "apparently you recognize this picture. Perhaps you can tell me what it is. It has puzzled me not a little, for it is on the back of a letter from my wife, who sketches a little, but this sketch is not in her style." "It reminds me," replied Jermyn deliberately, and with a visible affectation of carelessness, "of a bit of far Western scenery, which I used to know quite well, having been there on duty." Jermyn wished he could be alone a moment--wished he were a boy again, and in the centre of a great field or forest, where he could give a great, joyous shout. That missing letter! It had reached rightful hands at last--but how? He must telegraph the Admiral at once; how delighted the dear old fellow would be! Still, how in the name of all that was mysterious, had the tormenting screed found its way to the man to whom it was written? There was no address, nor even name, on the paper when he glanced at it in the fort, so the man for whom the sketches were made could not have known to whom it belonged. "When did you receive the sketch, Mr. Highwood?" Jermyn asked. "Perhaps there is an artist at the Point, of whom I have not heard." "It came this morning," Phil replied, hoping at the same time that his face was not telling of what was running in his mind. What would the man beside him think if he could know the contents of the letter? "It was evidently begun on one day and finished on another, for there are hints in it of a story which Mrs. Highwood will tell me when she reaches home. She is a dear, good wife, but she does hate to write a longer letter than is absolutely necessary." "I wonder that she gets time to write at all," said Jermyn, "for she is in great demand. She has probably written you that she has met several old acquaintances; nice people from everywhere seem to gravitate toward Old Point." Then Jermyn lapsed into such deep thought about that letter, and the ways in which it might have got back to its owner, that he almost forgot that he was not alone. "What can be the matter with the fellow?" wondered Highwood. "If Trif were almost any other woman in the world, I would think that there was some mystery in which she and he were mutually interested. I shall write her before I sleep, and ask her all about it; I don't know when in my life I've been so curious about anything."