But how could I make a statement?  How could I know what to say to a party of Confederates?  I laughed at the question, and especially at the thought which had caused it.  I had actually forgotten, for the moment, that I was a real Confederate, and had begun to imagine that I had been a Federal trying to get into the Confederate lines, and whom the Doctor was helping to do so.

But, was the Doctor a Confederate?  He must have been a Confederate.  If so, what was he, too, doing in the Federal camp?  He, too, a spy?  He and I were allies?  Possibly.

But is it not more likely that he was deceived in me?  Did he not think me a Union soldier?  If so, he thought that he was helping me to play the spy in the interest of the Federals.

What, then?  Why, then the Doctor was, after all, a surgeon in the Union army.

But I knew that the Doctor was thoroughly opposed to war; he would not fight; he took no side; he even argued with me ...  God! what was it that he argued?  And what in me was he arguing against?  He had contended—­I remember it—­that the war would destroy slavery, and that was what he wanted to be done; and I had contended that the Union was pledged by the Constitution to protect slavery, and all I wanted was the preservation of the Union.

A cold shudder came through me.

In an instant I could see better.  Such talk had been part of my plan.  I had even succeeded in blinding the Doctor.  Yet this thought gave little pleasure.  To have deceived the Doctor!  I had thought him too wise to allow himself to be deceived.

Yet any man may be cheated at times.  But, had I lent myself to a course which had cheated Dr. Khayme?  This was hard to believe.  I became bewildered again.  No matter which way I looked, there was a tangle.  I have not got to the bottom of this thing.

Of two things one must be true:  first, Dr. Khayme is a Confederate and my ally; second, I have been such a skilful spy that I have deceived him with all his wisdom and all my reluctance to deceive him.  Which of these two things is true?

Let me look again at the first.  I am sure that the Doctor was in some way attached to the army.  What army?  I know.  I know not only that it was the Union army, but I know even that it was McClellan’s army.  I remember now the Doctor’s telling me about movements that McClellan would make.  These things happened in McClellan’s army while I was a spy.  To suppose that the Doctor was my ally comports with his giving me information of McClellan’s movements.  He was a surgeon, and, of course, a Confederate; he certainly was from Charleston, and must have been a Confederate.  But, on the other hand, I remember clearly his great hostility to slavery, and his hostility, no less great, to war.  From this it seems that he could not have been a Confederate.

Let me look at the second.  I am sure that I was a spy and that I was in McClellan’s army.  I am equally sure that the Doctor knew that I was a spy.  He had even argued in favour of my work as a spy.  How, then, could I deceive him?  There is but one answer:  he thought me a Union spy, and that I was to go into the Confederate lines to get information, when the opposite was true.