And another thought, winch bewilders me no less.  On my musket I had carved J.B.  I was Jones Berwick as a Federal.  Then I must always have been Berwick Jones when a Confederate.  How did I ever get to be Berwick Jones?  How did I ever become Jones Berwick?  Which was I at first?  Had I ever deserted?  Had I ever been a spy?  I doubt everything.

My mind became clearer.  I could connect events:  the first Manassas, or Bull Bun; the helping of Willis; the meeting with the Doctor; the return to Willis; the shore and the battle of the ships; the Merrimac; the line of the Warwick; the lines at Hanover; the night tramp in the swamp; crossing the hill; a blank, which my double memory knew how to fill, and the subsequent events of my second service in our army.  Nothing important seemed lacking since the battle of Bull Run.  Before that battle everything was confusion.  My home was still unknown.  The friends of my former life, so far as I could remember, had been Federals, if Dr. Khayme and Lydia could be called Federals.

Yet I supposed my home was Charleston.  My memory now began with that city.  There were but two great gaps remaining to be filled:  first, my life before I was at school under the Doctor; second, my life at home and in the Confederate army before I pretended to desert to the Federals.

I am Jones Berwick and I am Berwick Jones?  What an absurdity!  Let reason work; the idea is preposterous!  What does it mean?  Can it mean any more than that you were known at one time as Jones Berwick and at another time as Berwick Jones?  It is insanity to think that you are two persons at once.  Have you imagined that now, while you are a Confederate again, there is also a you in the Yankee army?  When your connection with the Confederates was interrupted you were received by the Federals as Jones Berwick; the J.B. on the gunstock shows that well enough; but when you became a Confederate again, your name was reversed because of that diary!

I took out the diary.  It was too dark to read, but I knew every word of the few lines in it,—­B.  Jones, on the fly-leaf.

And now I recall that the Doctor had told me to write in the little book....  What was his purpose?  To deceive the enemy in case I should be taken?  Yes.

But—­I was going to become a Confederate again!

Did the Doctor know that?

Yes; he knew it.  At least he provided for such a change; the words he dictated were for a Confederate’s diary.  He knew it?  Yes; he helped me on with the Confederate uniform!

Then why should he think that additional effort—­the diary—­was required to make Confederates believe a Confederate a Confederate?

Could I not at once have named my original company and its officers?  Why this child’s play of the diary?

I studied hard this phase of the tangle.

Perhaps the Doctor wanted me to be able to prove myself to the first party of Confederates I should meet.  Yes; that is reasonable.  I might have been subjected to much embarrassing questioning—­and to detention—­but for something on my person to give substance to my statement.  The Doctor was far-sighted.  He had protected me.