But after he had carefully read the letter which Boyd bore from our General of Brigade, he asked us to be seated, and shut the table drawer, and came over to the silk-covered sofa on which we had seated ourselves.

“Do you know the contents of this letter?” he asked Boyd bluntly.

“Yes, Major Lockwood.”

“And does Mr. Loskiel know, also?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

The Major sat musing, turning over and over the letter between thumb and forefinger.

He was a man, I should say, of forty or a trifle more, with brown eyes which sometimes twinkled as though secretly amused, even when his face was gravest and most