CHAPTER XXVI
COURSE OF EVENTS.
With a howl of despair, Mrs. Baker came rushing into the kitchen of the Mather mansion, one morning in November, startling Annie with her vehemence as she thrust into her hand a dirty, half-worn envelope, which she said was from Bill, who had been missing since August, and who, it now appeared, was at Andersonville.
“Might better be dead,” his mother said, and then she explained that the letter she brought Annie had come in one to herself received that morning from Bill.
How he ever got it through the lines was a mystery which he did not explain; nor did Annie care, inasmuch as it brought news direct from Jimmie. He had written to her with the pencil and on the sheet of paper Bill had brought him, for Bill Baker was employed outside the prison walls, and
