The note was written in pencil on a piece of coa.r.s.e gray paper, folded several times, but with a face large enough to show Harry"s name upon it.
He wondered, but said nothing to the sentinel, and did not look at the note again, until he had ridden some distance.
He stopped in a little glade where the moonlight fell clearly. He still heard scattered firing behind him, but he knew that the skirmish was in reality over, and he concluded that no further attempt by Union detachments to advance would be made in the face of such vigilance.
He could report to General Lee that the rear of his army was safe.
So he would delay and look at the letter that had come to him out of the mysterious darkness.
The superscription was in a large, bold hand, and read:
LIEUTENANT HARRY KENTON, STAFF OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, C. S. A., COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA.
He felt instinctively that something uncommon was coming, and, as most people do when they are puzzled at the appearance of a letter, he looked at it some seconds before opening it. Then he read:
MR. KENTON:
I have warned you twice before, once when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated at Montgomery, and once again in Virginia. I told you that the South could never win. I told you that she might achieve brilliant victories, and she may achieve them even yet, but they will avail her nothing.
Victories permit her to maintain her position for the time being, but they do not enable her to advance. A single defeat causes her to lose ground that she can never regain.
I tell you this as a warning. Although your enemy, I have seen you more than once and talked with you. I like you and would save your life if I could. I would induce you, if I could, to leave the army and return to your home, but that I know to be impossible. So, I merely tell you that you are fighting for a cause now lost. Perhaps it is pride on my part to remind you that my early predictions have come true, and perhaps it is a wish that the thought I may plant in your mind will spread to others.
You have lost at Gettysburg a hope and an offensive that you can never regain, and Grant at Vicksburg has given a death blow to the Western half of the Confederacy.
As for you, I wish you well.
WILLIAM J. SHEPARD.
Harry stared in amazement at this extraordinary communication, and read it over two or three times. He was not surprised that Shepard should be near, and that he should have been inside the Confederate lines, but that he should leave a letter, and such a letter, for him was uncanny.
His first feeling, wonder, was succeeded by anger. Did Shepard really think that he could influence him in such a way, that he could plant in his mind a thought that would spread to others of his age and rank and weaken the cause for which he fought? It was a singular idea, but Shepard was a singular man.
But perhaps pride in recalling the prediction that he had made long ago was Shepard"s stronger motive, and Harry took fire at that also. The Confederacy was not beaten. A single defeat--no, it was not a defeat, merely a failure to win--was not mortal, and as for the West, the Confederacy would gather itself together there and overwhelm Grant!
Then came a new emotion, a kind of grat.i.tude to Shepard. The man was really a friend, and would do him a service, if it could be done, without injuring his own cause! He could not feel any doubt of it, else the spy would not have taken the risk to send him such a letter. He read it for the last time, then tore it into little pieces which he entrusted to the winds.
The firing behind him had died completely, and there was no sound but the rustle of dry leaves in the light wind, nothing to tell that there had been sharp fighting along the creek, and that men lay dead in the forest.
The moon and the stars clothed everything in a whitish light, that seemed surcharged with a powerful essence, and this essence was danger.
The spirit of the great forest ranger descended upon him once more, and he read the omens, all of which were sinister. He foresaw terrible campaigns, mighty battles in the forest, and a roll of the dead so long that it seemed to stretch away into infinity.
Then he shook himself violently, cast off the spell, and rode rapidly back with his report. Lee had risen and was standing under a tree.
He was fully dressed and his uniform was trim and unwrinkled. Harry thought anew as he rode up, what a magnificent figure he was. He was the only great man he ever saw who really looked his greatness. Nothing could stir that calm. Nothing could break down that loftiness of manner.
Harry was destined to feel then, as he felt many times afterward, that without him the South had never a chance. And the choking came in his throat again, as he thought of him who was gone, of him who had been the right arm of victory, the hammer of Thor.
But he hid all these feelings as he quickly dismounted and saluted the commander-in-chief.
"What have you seen, Lieutenant Kenton?" asked Lee.
"A considerable detachment of the enemy tried to force the pa.s.sage of the creek in our right rear. They were met by Captain Sherburne"s troop dismounted, and three companies of infantry, and were driven back after a sharp fight."
"Very good. Captain Sherburne is an alert officer."
He turned away, and Harry, giving his horse to an orderly, again resumed his old position under a tree, out of hearing of the generals, but in sight. Dalton was not there, but he knew that skirmishing had occurred in other directions, and doubtless the Virginian had been sent on an errand like his own.
He had a sense of rest and realization as he leaned back against the tree. But it was mental tension, not physical, for which relief came, and Shepard, much more than the battle at the creek, was in his thoughts.
The strong personality of the spy and his seeming omniscience oppressed him again. Apparently he was able to go anywhere, and nothing could be hidden from him. He might be somewhere in the circling shadows at that very moment, watching Lee and his lieutenants. His pulses leaped.
Shepard had achieved an extraordinary influence over him, and he was prepared to believe the impossible.
He stood up and stared into the bushes, but sentinels stood there, and no human being could pa.s.s their ring unseen. Presently Dalton came, made a brief report to General Lee and joined his comrade. Harry was glad of his arrival. The presence of a comrade brought him back to earth and earth"s realities. The sinister shadows that oppressed him melted away and he saw only the ordinary darkness of a summer night.
The two sat side by side. Dalton perhaps drew as much strength as Harry from the comradeship, and they watched other messengers arrive with dispatches, some of whom rolled themselves in their blankets at once, and went to sleep, although three, who had evidently slept in the day, joined Harry and Dalton in their vigil.
Harry saw that the commander-in-chief was holding a council at that hour, nearer morning than midnight. A general kicked some of the pieces of burned wood together and fanned them into a light flame, enough to take away the slight chill that was coming with the morning. The men stood around it, and talked a long time, although it seemed to Harry that Lee said least. Nevertheless his tall figure dominated them all. Now and then Harry saw his face in the starshine, and it bore its habitual grave and impa.s.sive look.
The youth did not hear a word that was said, but his imaginative power enabled him to put himself in the place of the commander-in-chief.
He knew that no man, however great his courage, could fail to appreciate his position in the heart of a hostile country, with a lost field behind him, and with superior numbers hovering somewhere in his rear or on his flank. He realized then to the full the critical nature of their position and what a mighty task Lee had to save the army.
One of his young comrades whispered to him that the Potomac, the barrier between North and South, was rising, flooded by heavy rains in both mountains and lowlands, and that a body of Northern cavalry had already destroyed a pontoon bridge built by the South across it. They might be hemmed in, with their backs to an unfordable river, and an enemy two or three times as numerous in front.
"Don"t you worry," whispered Dalton, with sublime confidence. "The general will take us to Virginia."
Harry projected his imagination once more. He sought to put himself in the place of Lee, receiving all the reports and studying them, trying to measure s.p.a.ce that could not be measured, and to weigh a total that could not be weighed. Greatness and responsibility were compelled to pay thrice over for themselves, and he was glad that he was only a young lieutenant, the chief business of whom was to fetch and carry orders.
Shafts of sunlight were piercing the eastern foliage when the council broke up, and shortly after daylight the Southern army was again on the march, with Northern cavalry and riflemen hanging on its flanks and rear.
Harry was permitted to rejoin, for a while, his friends of the Invincibles and he found Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire riding very erect, a fine color in their faces.
"You come from headquarters, Harry, and therefore you are omniscient,"
said Colonel Talbot. "We heard firing in the night. What did it mean?"
"Only skirmishers, Colonel. I think they wanted to annoy us, but they paid the price."
"Inevitably. Our general is as dangerous in retreat as in advance.
I fancy that General Meade will not bring up his lagging forces until we near the Potomac."
"They say it"s rising, sir, and that it will be very hard to cross."
"That creates a difficulty but not an impossibility. Ordinary men yield to difficulties, men like our commander-in-chief are overcome only by impossibilities. But the further we go, Harry, the more reconciled I grow to our withdrawal. I have seen scarcely a friendly face among the population. I would not have us thrust ourselves upon people who do not like us. It would go very hard with our kindly Southern nature to have to rule by force over people who are in fact our brethren. Defensive wars are the just wars, and perhaps it will be really better for us to retire to Virginia and protect its sacred soil from the tread of the invader. Eh, Hector?"
"Right, as usual, Leonidas. The reasons for our retirement are most excellent. We have already spoken of the fact that Philadelphia might prove a Capua for our young troops, and now we are relieved from the chance of appearing as oppressors. It can never be said of us by the people of Pennsylvania that we were tyrants. It"s an invidious task to rule over the unwilling, even when one rules with justice and wisdom.
It"s strange, perhaps, Leonidas, but it"s a universal truth, that people would rather be ruled by themselves in a second rate manner than by the foreigner in a first rate manner. Now, the government of our states is attacked by Northern critics, but such as it is, it is ours and it"s our first choice. Do we bore you, Harry?"
"Not at all, sir. I never listen to either you or Colonel Talbot without learning something."
The two colonels bowed politely.
"I have wished for some time to speak to you about a certain matter, Hector," said Colonel Talbot.
"What is it, Leonidas?"