Ah! yes; Willis is a prisoner, after all, and in the Confederate hospital.

The thought of a possible relationship between the Doctor and the Captain continued to come.  Why should I think of such a possibility?  My brain became clearer.  My people must be in Charleston.  The Captain may have known the Doctor in Charleston.  They may have been friends.  They talked of similar subjects—­at least, they had views which affected me similarly.  Yet that might mean nothing.  I tried to give up the thought.

Again the Doctor’s face, and the Captain.  For one short instant these two men seemed to me to be at once identical and separate—­even opposite.  How preposterous!  Yet at the same moment I remembered that the Captain once had said he was not sure that there was such a condition as absolute individuality.  Preposterous or not, the thought, gone at once, had brought another in its train:  I had never seen these two men together, and I had never seen the Doctor without Jones.  Wherever the Doctor was, there was Jones also.  Here came again the former glimmering notion of double and even opposite identity.  Was Jones two?  He was seemingly a Federal and a Confederate.  I had supposed, weakly, that he was a Confederate spy in a Federal uniform; but his conduct at Manassas had not borne out the supposition.  He had even broken his gun rather than have it fall into the hands of Confederates, and had helped a wounded Federal.  Yet, again, that conduct might have been part of a very deep plan.  What plan?  To deceive the enemy so fully that he would be received everywhere as one of them?  Yes; or rather to act in entire conformity with his supposed character.  He must always act the complete Federal when with federals, so that no suspicion should attach to him.  No doubt he had remained in the Federal camp until he had got the information needed, and had returned to the Confederates before he had been wounded by the shell.

So, all these fancies had resulted in worse than nothing; every effort I had made, on these lines, had but entangled me more.  That Jones was a Confederate spy, was highly probable; this absurd notion of a double had drawn me away from the right track; he was a double, it is true, but only on the surface; he was a Confederate acting the Federal.

Jones interests me intensely.  There is something extraordinary about him.  No man that I ever saw or heard of seems to possess his capacity to interest me.  Yet his only peculiarity is that he changes clothing.  No, not his only one; he has another:  he is absolutely ubiquitous.

That he has some close relationship with me is clear.  Why clear?  Just because I cannot get rid of him?  Is that a reason?  Nothing is clear.  My head is not clear.  All this mysterious Jones matter may be delusion.  Dr. Khayme is fact, and Lydia is fact, and Willis; but as to this Jones, or these Joneses, I doubt.  Doubt is not relief.  Jones remains.  Wherever I turn I find him.  He will not down.  If he is a fact, he must be the most important person related to my life.  More so than Lydia?