"I'm sorry, miss," the man said, "but I couldn't get to Captain March. I went everywhere and tried asking a lot of folks, but couldn't find out nothing. They wouldn't let me into the camp, even, much less to the gentleman's tent, so I can't tell you whether he's there or not. I did my best, but the army's different from civil life. When they say 'no' they mean 'no' and there ain't no goin' around it, or they prods you with one of them bayonets."
"Surely you haven't come back without any news?" I cried. "You must have heard something!"
"Not a thing at the camp, except what I've just told you, miss," the messenger persisted. "I hung around, and whenever I seen some chap going in, if I could get him to speak I asked questions till they begun to take me for one of them newspaper guys. It was only when I seen the stunt was no good I chucked it and come back with your letter. There's just one thing I did hear, but not in camp. 'Twas outside the hotel, as I stopped my wheel. I met an old soldier from the Fort I'd been acquainted with a good long time—fact is, he's engaged to my sister. I asked him if he'd heard about Captain March being wounded. And he said—only I don't know as I ought to tell you what he said——"
"Tell me—every word," I panted.
"Well, then, if it's every word you want, miss, he said it was all damn nonsense about March being wounded, that something big was up, and he's under arrest."
Under arrest! The words struck like bullets. Just for a second everything swam before my eyes, and I was afraid that I was going to do the most idiotic thing a woman can do—faint. You see, I had had no sleep and wasn't quite at my best. But I pulled myself together, and in my ears my voice sounded only a little sharp, as I asked the messenger if his soldier friend had given him any further information.
"Not he! Shut up tight as a clam," was the answer. "I don't believe he knowed anything else."
There was nothing more to be got from that quarter, so I paid the man and let him go. Then I tried to think how I could hope to probe to the bottom of the mystery, since mystery there certainly was. It seemed to me that, since I wasn't able to reach Eagle by letter, my one chance lay in Tony. His manner, and the admissions he had inadvertently dropped last night, had told me that he had some knowledge of the truth, which was to be hidden from the public. He had refused to be pumped, and I respected him for his refusal; but I wasn't the public. Whatever the secret might be, I would keep it. All I wanted to do was to help Captain March if he could be helped; for I was sure all through to my soul that, if he had been arrested, it was through some terrible mistake or cruel injustice. It was wicked of me, perhaps, deliberately to make a tool of poor Tony's love for me, but I tried to justify myself in deciding to do so by saying that no harm could come to him through it, or evil to any one.
"I'll wheedle the truth out of Tony," I thought again.
I dared not write and beg him to come and see me, for after our parting last night he would suspect what I wanted and have time to steel himself against me before we met. Nor could I go to the camp and try to find him there, for I—a young girl—wouldn't be admitted alone even if I were desperate enough to think of attempting such a wild adventure. If I persuaded Mrs. Dalziel to take me, and we had the luck to see Tony, I shouldn't have a moment with him alone, whereas the process of "wheedling" might take many minutes.