Two days after the excitement in Frederick consequent upon the escape of the supposed spy Colonel Putnam was chatting with the provost-marshal and the landlord of the tavern where Doctor Warren had paid his brief visit.  They were discussing a piece of news that had come in during the morning.  From the very first the proprietor of the old tavern had scoffed at the theory of there being anything of a Southern spy about the mysterious stranger.  He was a Southern man himself, and, though hardly an enemy to the Union, he had that personal sympathy for a host of neighbors and friends which gave him something of a leaning that way.  He did not believe, he openly said, that anything on earth could whip the South so long as they kept on their own soil; but things looked black for their cause when they crossed the Potomac.  Maryland had not risen in tumultuous welcome as Lee hopefully expected.  The worn, ragged, half- starved soldiers that had marched up the valley in mid-September had little of the heroic in their appearance, despite the fame of their exploits; and in their hunger and thirst they had made way, soldier-fashion, with provender for which they could not pay.  The host himself had suffered not a little from their forays, and while his sentiments were broadly Southern his business instincts were emphatically on the side of the greenbacks of the North.  He had found the Union officers men of means, if not of such picturesquely martial attributes as their Southern opponents; and while he would not deny his friendship for many a gallant fellow in the rebel gray, neither would he rebuff the blue-coat whose palm was tinged with green.  He liked the provost-marshal because that functionary had twice rescued his bar from demolition at the hands of a gang of stragglers.  He admired Colonel Putnam as a soldier and a gentleman, but he was enjoying a triumph over both of them; he had news to tell which seemed to sustain his theory and defeat theirs as to the identity of the man who left his beard behind him.

“I am told you knew this Doctor Warren, colonel,” he was saying, “and up to this time I had not spoken of him for reasons which ­well, because he had reasons for asking me to make no mention of his being here.  Now, if he was a Doctor Warren, from the North, and a loyal man, what would he be doing with a spy?”

“I did not know he saw him at all,” said Colonel Putnam, quickly.

“Nor do I; but I do believe that he was here purposely to meet him; that he, the man you tried to arrest, was here at this house to meet your friend who followed you out to camp.  If Doctor Warren is a loyal man, as you doubtless believe him, he would have no call to be here to get papers from a man who could only meet him in disguise.  I’m told the doctor made himself all clear to you as to who he was.”

Colonel Putnam’s face is a study.  He is unquestionably turning pale, and his eyes are filled with a strange, introspective, puzzled look.  He is startled, too.

“Do you mean to tell me he did have communication with the doctor?” he asks.

“My wife is ready to swear to it,” replies mine host.  “Her story is simply this:  She had come down-stairs just as the doctor returned.  She had been sitting with the young lady, who was very nervous and ill at ease while he was away, and had gone into the kitchen at the back of the house to get her a cup of tea.  She was startled by a rap at the door, and in walks a man wrapped up in a big military cape.  He wore spectacles and a full black beard, and he took off his hat, and spoke like a gentleman.  He said he desired to see either Doctor Warren or the young lady at once on business of the utmost importance, and asked her if she would conduct him up by a rear stairway.  My wife told him to go around to the office, but he replied that he expected that, and hastened to tell her that it was because there were Union officers in the hallway that he could not go there.  There were personal reasons why he must not be seen; and she said to him that a man who looked like an officer and spoke like a gentleman ought not to be afraid to go among his fellows; and he said he was not an officer, and then asked her, suddenly, if she was a friend to the North or the South; and before she could answer they both saw lights dancing about out there in the yard, and he was startled, and said ’twas for him they were searching, and begged her, as she was a woman, not to betray him; he was the young lady’s lover, he said in explanation, and had risked much to meet her.  And my wife’s heart was touched at that, and she showed him a place to hide; and when she went up she heard the young lady sobbing and the old man trying hard to comfort her; and she knocked, but they begged to be left undisturbed until they called, and she went down and told the man; and he was fearfully nervous and worried, she said, especially when told about the crying going on; and he wrote a few lines on a scrap of paper, gave it to her with a little packet, and she took them up to the doctor; and they were just coming out of their room at the moment, and the doctor put the papers in his pocket, and said to her and to me that he begged us to make no mention of his daughter’s being there to any one ­there were reasons.  And her face was hidden in her veil, and he seemed all broken down with anxiety or illness, and said they must have a carriage or something to take them at once to the railway.  They probably went back to Baltimore that night, but the doctor took the packet in his pocket; and the man whom you saw come up from under the back piazza, colonel, was the man who sent it him.”

The provost-marshal is deeply interested.  Colonel Putnam sits, in a maze of perplexity, silent and astounded.

“The doctor was well known to you, was he not, Putnam?” asked the marshal.

The colonel starts, embarrassed and troubled.

“No.  I never saw him before.”

“He brought letters to you, didn’t he?”

“No letters.  In fact, it wasn’t me whom he came to see at all.”

“Whom did he want, then?”

“Mr. Abbot,” answers the colonel, briefly, and with growing embarrassment.

“Oh!  Abbot knew him, did he?”

“No; he didn’t.  That is the singular part of it.  The more I recall the interview the more I’m upset.”

“Why so?”

“Because he said he had come to see an old friend of his son’s whom he mourned as killed at Seven Pines.  He named Abbot, and said he had been in correspondence with him for a year.  As luck would have it, Abbot was sitting right there beside me, and I said at once, ‘Here’s your man,’ or something like it; and then Abbot didn’t know him at all; declared he had never written a line to him; never heard of him.  The old gentleman was completely floored.  He vowed that for a whole year he had been receiving letters from Lieutenant Paul Revere Abbot, and now had come to see him because he was reported severely wounded.”

“Did he show you any of the letters?”

“Why, no!  He said there were none with him.  He ­I declare I do not know what excuse he did give,” says the colonel, in dire distress of mind.

The provost-marshal’s eyes are glittering, and his face is set and eager.  He thinks intently one moment, and then turns on the silent colonel and their perplexed landlord.

“Keep this thing perfectly quiet, gentlemen; I may have to look further into it; but at this moment, colonel, circumstances point significantly at your friend, the doctor.  Do you see nothing suspicious in his conduct?  His confident claim of a year’s correspondence with an officer of your regiment was possibly to gain your friendship and protection.  As ill-luck for him and good-luck for us would have it, he named the wrong man.  Abbot was there, and could deny it on the spot.  The old man was floored, of course; but his only way of carrying the thing through was to play the martyr, and tell the story that for a year somebody had been writing to him daily or weekly over the name of Abbot.  What a very improbable yarn, Putnam!  Just think for yourself.  What man would be apt to do that sort of thing?  What object could he have?  Why, the doctor himself well realized what a transparent fiction it must appear, and away he slips by the night train the moment he gets back.  And now our friend, the landlord, throws further light upon the matter.  He was here to meet that night visitor, perhaps convey valuable information to him, but was frightened by the blunder he had made, and got away as speedily as possible, and without seeing the owner of the beard, although a packet of papers was duly handed to him from that mysterious party.  Doctor Warren may turn out a candidate for the fortress of that name in your own harbor, colonel.”

And, thinking it all over, Putnam cannot make up his mind what to say.  There is something in his impression of the doctor that utterly sets at naught any belief that he was acting a part.  He was so simple, so direct, so genuine in his manner and in his distress.  On the other hand, analyzing the situation, the colonel is compelled to realize that to any one but himself the doctor’s story would appear unworthy of credence.  He is in this uncomfortable frame of mind when a staff-officer comes to see him with some papers from the quartermaster-general that call for an immediate investigation of the affairs of the missing Lieutenant Hollins, and for two or three days Colonel Putnam is away at the supply depot on the railway.  It is there that he learns the pleasant news that his gallant young comrade has been promoted to a most desirable staff position, and ordered to report for duty in Washington as soon as able to travel.  He writes a line of congratulation to Abbot, and begs him to be sure and send word when he will come through, so that they may meet, and then returns to his patient overhauling of the garbled accounts of the quondam quartermaster.

No answer comes from Abbot, and the colonel is so busy that he thinks little of it.  The investigation is giving him a world of insight into the crookedness of the late administration, and has put him in possession of facts and given rise to theories that are of unusual interest, and so, when he hears that Abbot was able to leave the hospital and ride slowly in to the railway and so on to Baltimore, he merely regrets not having seen him, and thinks little of it.

But the provost-marshal has been busily at work; has interviewed Abbot and cross-examined the landlady.  He has found an officer who says that the night of the escapade at Frederick his horse was taken from in front of the house of some friends he was visiting in the southern edge of the town, and was found next morning by the pickets clear down at the bridge where the canal crosses the Monocacy; and the pickets said he looked as though he had been ridden hard and fast, and that no trace of rider could be found.  Inquiry among patrols and guards develops the fact that a man riding such a horse, wearing such a hat and cape as was described, but with a smooth face and spectacles, had passed south during the night, and claimed to be on his way to Point of Rocks with despatches for the commanding officer from General Franklin.  He exhibited an order made out for Captain Hollister, and signed by Seth Williams, adjutant-general of the army in the field.  No such officer had reached Point of Rocks, and the provost-marshal becomes satisfied that on or about the 4th or 5th of October this very party who was prowling about the town of Frederick has gotten back into Virginia, possibly with valuable information.

When, on the evening of the 10th, there comes the startling news that “Jeb” Stuart, with all his daring gray raiders at his back, has leaped the Potomac at Williamsport, and is galloping up the Cumberland Valley around McClellan’s right, the provost-marshal is convinced that the bold dash is all due to information picked up under his very nose in the valley of the Monocacy.  If he ever had the faintest doubt of the justice of his suspicions as to “Doctor Warren’s” complicity, the doubt has been removed.  Already, at his instance, a secret-service agent has visited Hastings, and wires back the important news that the doctor left there about the 25th of September, and has not returned.  On the 11th he is rejoiced by a telegram from Washington which tells him that, acting on his advices, Doctor Warren had been found, and is now under close surveillance at Willard’s.

Then it is time for him to look out for his own movements.  Having leaped into the Union lines with all his native grace and audacity, the cavalier Stuart reposes a few days at Chambersburg, placidly surveying the neighborhood and inviting attack.  Then he rides eastward over the South Mountain, and the next heard of him he is coming down the Monocacy.  McClellan’s army is encamped about Sharpsburg and Harper’s Ferry.  He has but few cavalry, and, at this stage of the war, none that can compete successfully with Stuart.  Not knowing just what to do against so active and calmly audacious an opponent, the Union general is possibly too glad to get rid of him to attempt any check.  To the vast indignation and disappointment of many young and ardent soldiers in our lines, he is apparently riding homeward unmolested, picking up such supplies as he desires, paroling such prisoners as he does not want to burden himself with, and exchanging laughing greetings with old friends he meets everywhere along the Monocacy.  At Point of Rocks, whither our provost-marshal and Colonel Putnam are driven for shelter, together with numerous squads of convalescents and some dozen stragglers, there is arming for defence, and every intention of giving Jeb a sharp fight should he attempt to pick up supplies or stragglers from its sturdy garrison.  Every hour there is exciting news of his coming, and, with their glasses, the officers can see clouds of dust rising high in air far up the valley.  Putnam has urgent reason for wanting to rejoin his regiment at once.  What with the information he has received from the two or three officers whom he has questioned, and the papers themselves, he has immediate need of seeing the ex-quartermaster sergeant, Rix.  But he cannot go when there is a chance for a fight right here.  Stuart may dash in westward, and have just one lively tussle with them to cover the crossing of his valuable plunder and prisoners below.  Of course they have not men enough to think of confronting him.  Just in the midst of all the excitement there comes an orderly with despatches and letters from up the river, and one of them is for Putnam, from the major commanding the regiment.  It is brief enough, but exasperating.  “I greatly regret to have to report to you, in answer to your directions with regard to Rix, that they came too late.  In some utterly unaccountable way, though we fear through collusion on part of a member or members of the guard, Rix made his escape two nights ago, and is now at large.”