I am as certain that it was Jackson as you are, because I know the circumstances; but you see there is no more absolute proof against one man than against the other.

It is true that you had had a quarrel with Jackson some two years before, but you see you had made it up and had become friends in prison--so much so that you selected him from among a score of others in the same room to be the companion of your flight.

You and I, who know Jackson, can well believe him guilty of an act of gross ingratitude--of ingratitude and treachery; but people who do not know would hardly credit it as possible that a man could be such a villain.

The defense he would set up would be that in the first place there is no shadow of evidence that he more than the other turned traitor.

In the second place he would be sure to say that such an accusation against a Confederate officer is too monstrous and preposterous to be entertained for a moment; and that doubtless your negro, although he denies the fact, really chattered about his doings to the negroes he was lodging with, and that it was through them that someone got to know of the disguise you would wear.