"Which way did he go?" quickly asked the officer with me.
"Down the street, sir, towards Canal."
"Give me one of your fastest horses. Tell the first sergeant I want to see him at once, and let the men unsaddle again."
"What do you think it is?" I anxiously asked.
"Fever; and he is twice as delirious as Vinton was. We must find him at once."
CHAPTER XIII.
That night we had a chase such as I had never before indulged in. The aide-de-camp believed Frank Amory to be ill with fever:—delirium in fact, but to my knowledge delirium was unusual as a first symptom of an ordinary Southern fever. He might be feverish; might indeed be ill; but that alone would not be apt to cause his extraordinary excitement. Two or three officers at headquarters had remarked his strange manner and absent-minded replies, said the aide, while he had been there early in the evening, but at that time his face was pale rather than flushed.
At the stables on Magazine Street we again questioned the sergeant. "Did the lieutenant appear to be under any strong excitement?" asked the aide-de-camp, and the sergeant eyed him askance a moment as though he misunderstood the drift of the question, seeing which I interposed,—
"The captain fears that Mr. Amory is seized with just such a fever as that which prostrated Major Vinton." Whereat the sergeant looked relieved, and answered,—