"Your true friend,
"Adolph La G——,
"P.S.—I leave here for the East this morning. Please answer on immediate receipt.
A. L."
This was posted on the eastern-bound train not an hour after my son's arrival from the West; and another note was written upon the back of an envelope which had passed through the mail, and had got a very much used appearance, and ran thus:
"Father of Lizzie:
"Treat Adolph well, you can trust him. Give him one of the 'photos' taken at Atlanta in my full-dress uniform; keep one other of the same for yourselves; but destroy all the rest. Have been so hurried and worried that I don't remember whether I have said anything about photographs before. But this is a matter of imperative necessity. Adolph will explain how he met me.
"Good-by,
"H. ——"
It was impossible to detect any difference between this handwriting and that of Captain Taylor's in his business correspondence to Kuhn Brothers; and, armed with this document, with the assistance of the epistolary self-introduction which had preceded it, I directed my son to leave for Philadelphia that evening, secure admission to Taylor's residence and the family's confidence, agreeable to the appointment made by mail, and thus not only secure the man's photograph, but other information that would be definite.