How this had come about she did not
know. Three weeks before he had been in despair over the faint
prospect of doing what he wished; then suddenly, and without any
explanation of how the change had come about, he had rushed in upon
her with the news that he was going to enlist in a company made up
of bronco busters and rough riders from the West, that she need not
worry about herself or about him, for he had just put five hundred
dollars to her account in bank, and that as for himself he possessed
a charmed life and was immune, as she well knew, and need fear
bullets no more than the fever. By this he meant that he had had
yellow fever years before in Louisiana, and that a ball which had
once been fired at him had gone clean through his body without
taking his life.
"What was the date of the evening on which be told you he had placed
money in bank for you?"
"April the twenty-ninth."
Two days after the Jeffrey-Moore wedding!
Convinced now that his departure from town was something more than
a coincidence, I pursued my inquiries and found that he had been
received, just as she had said, into the First Volunteer Corps under
Colonel Wood. This required influence. Whose was the influence?
It took me some time to find out, but after many and various
attempts, most of which ended in failure, I succeeded in learning
that the man who had worked and obtained for him a place in this
favored corps was FRANCIS JEFFREY.
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