“Do you know,” whispered Sally, “crazy as I am to hear all about it, I almost dread it, too. I’m so afraid it may have been bad news for her.”
“I feel just the same,” confided Doris, “and yet I’m bursting with impatience, too. Well, let’s go on and hear the worst. If it’s very bad, she probably won’t want to say much about it.”
But their first sight of Miss Camilla convinced them that the news was not, at least, “very bad.” She sat on the porch as usual, knitting serenely, but there was a new light in her face, a sweet, satisfied tranquillity that had never been there before.
“I’m glad you’ve come!” she greeted them. “I have much to tell you.”
“Was it—was it all right?” faltered Doris.
“It was more than ‘all right,’ ” she replied. “It was wonderful. But I am going to read the whole thing to you. I spent nearly all last night deciphering the letter,—for a letter it was,—and I think it is only right you should hear it, after what you have done for me.” She went inside the house and brought out several large sheets of paper on which she had transcribed the meaning of the mysterious message.
“Listen,” she said. “It is as wonderful as a fairy-tale. And how I have misjudged him!”
“ ‘My beloved sister,’ ” she read, “ ‘in the event of any disaster befalling us, I want you to know the danger and the difficulties of what we have undertaken. It is only right that you should, and I know of no other way to communicate it to you, than by the roundabout means of this military cipher which I am using. You are away in Europe now, and safe, and Father intentionally keeps you there because of the very dangerous enterprise in which we are involved. Lest any untoward thing should befall before your return, we leave this as an explanation.
“ ‘Contrary to any appearances, or anything you may hear said in the future, I am a loyal and devoted soldier of the Union. But I am serving it in the most dangerous capacity imaginable,—as a scout or spy in the Confederate Army, wearing its uniform, serving in its ranks, but in reality spying on every move and action and communicating all its secrets that I am capable of obtaining to the Government and our own commanders. I stand in hourly danger of being discovered—and for that there is but one end. You know what it is. Of course, I am not serving under my own name, so that if you never hear word of my fate, you may know it is the only one possible for those who are serving as I serve.
“ ‘Father is also carrying on the work, but in a slightly different capacity. There are a set of Confederate workers up here secretly engaged in raising funds and planning new campaigns for the South. Father has identified himself with them, and they hold many meetings at our house to discuss plans and information. Apparently he is hand in glove with them, but in reality is all the while disclosing their plans to the Government. They could doubtless kill him without scruple, if they suspected it, and get away to the safety of their own lines unscathed, before anything was discovered. So you see, he also stands hourly on the brink of death.