apidly growing stronger upon the mind of
the brilliant, sensitive boy, so susceptible to splendor of both thought
and action. The general, not yet great to the world, but great already
to those around him, dominated the mind of the boy. Harry was proud to
serve him.

He saw that Jackson had taken no sleep, and he would take none
either. Soon the question was forgotten, and he toiled all through the
afternoon, glad to be at the heart of affairs so important.

Winchester was a sprightly little city, one of the best in the great
valley, inhabited by cultivated people of old families, and Southern to
the core. Harry and his young comrades had found a good welcome there.
They had been in many houses and they had made many friends. The
Virginians liked his bright face and manners. Now they could not fail
to see that some great movement was afoot, and more than once his new
friends asked him its nature, but he replied truthfully that he did
not know. In the throb of great action Winchester disappeared from his
thoughts. Every faculty was bent upon the plans of Jackson, whatever
they might be.

The afternoon drew to a close and then the short winter twilight passed
swiftly. The last night of the Old Year had come, and Harry was to enter
at dawn upon one of the most vivid periods in the life of any boy that
ever lived, a period paralleled perhaps only by that of the French lads
who followed the young Bonaparte into the plains of Italy. Harry with
all his dreams, arising from the enormous impression made upon him by
Jackson, could not yet foresee what lay before him.

He was returning on foot from one of his shorter errands. He had ridden
throughout the afternoon, but the time came when he thought the horse
ought to rest, and with the coming of the twilight he had walked. He
was not conscious of any weakness. His body, in a way, had become a mere
mechanism. It worked, because the will acted upon it like a spring, but
it was detached, separate from his mind. He took no more interest in it
than he would in any other machine, which, when used up, could be cast
aside, and be replaced with a new one.

He glanced at the camp, stretching through the darkness. Much fewer
fires were burning than usual, and the men, warned to sleep while they
could, had wrapped themselves already in their blankets. Then he entered
the tent of Jackson with the reply to an order that he had taken to a
brigadier.

The general stood by a wall of the ten