head of it. We have only two or three days more, as I can now see, to remain here without participating in it. F. wants to know definitely whether he shall go into it. As I said previously, we are afraid of the authorities. That rebel lady, the belle of Louisville, told me to-day she had a warm friend in the provost-marshal's office. I believe her. I have doubts about attaining our true object.

EDWARD F. HOFFMAN.

P. S. - I am using my sickness to advantage. Doctor T. has just been with me and thinks me too unwell to go South.

LOUISVILLE, May 10, 1864.

I have no doubt my letters have much perplexed you from their apparent inconsistencies. Notwithstanding, they are strictly truthful. They embraced the outlines of cases, appearances, and probabilities at the time at which each was written. * * * I now have the pleasure of informing you that we have, from a lucky revolution of the wheel of fortune, an unexpected source, gained part of the first degree, and will to-night gain the remainder of the said degree. It is probable that this is all we can gain here, but one step, if it be genuine, will enable us to graduate at some other point.

EDWARD F. HOFFMAN.

LOUISVILLE, May 13, 1864.

In my last I mentioned our partial success. We have the first degree. Yesterday afternoon I found the "hive. " It is at Grant's, about ten miles in the country. He is the man who harbors all the underground men. Now, we have to manage this delicately. We are on the alert for traps. We have complicated our true object with other things previously mentioned, and which designs to develop all in the same trip. There is much risk in this exploit. By arrangement I remain here working the thing to a focus. Foster, alias Wilbur, the spy, is in it; Martin, who furnishes the arms, is in it; and Grant, the worst scoundrel of them all, is in it. Foster has a letter to Thornton's son which will draw in Thornton. I wanted to go out there with them, but he thinks it best for me to remain here, taking care of papers and watching out for a - . A spy named Thomas Forrest, about an inch taller than Foster, with dyed whiskers, left here by rail for Saint Louis. Have got his name and object from a friend here yesterday. This man received $500 in this city in a few hours.

I have accurate notes of everything here for your benefit. We will, I think, be home in a few days. I have suffered much from sickness - am suffering now. If we have no bad luck we will gain our true object.

EDWARD F. HOFFMAN.

P.

SAINT LOUIS, MaY 17, 1864.

Colonel J. P. SANDERSON:

I respectfully report that in obedience to instructions I made a trip through porions of Northern Illinois, spending some days at Jacksonville, Springfield, an Chicago. At Jacksonville I found no temple of the O. A. K., but I learned there was one in the county. At Springfield there I a temple, and a large number of them in the towns and vicinity around it. Among those belonging to the order in Illinois I met at Springfield with B. B. Piper, grand missionary of

the State; L. D.