, and the
principal generals for whom he had sent were entering the tent. Hill,
Longstreet, Ewell, Stuart and others came, but they did not stay long.
They talked earnestly with their leader for a little while, and then
every one departed to lead his brigades.

The secretaries put away pen, ink and paper. Twilight was advancing in
the east and night suddenly fell outside. The songs ceased, the bands
played no more, and there was only the deep rumble of marching men and
moving cannon.

"We'll ride now, gentlemen," said Lee to his staff.

Traveller, saddled and bridled, was waiting and the commander-in-chief
sprang into the saddle with all the agility of a young man. The others
mounted, too, Harry and Dalton as usual taking their places modestly in
the rear.

A regiment, small in numbers but famous throughout the army for valor,
was just passing, and its colonel and its lieutenant-colonel, erect men,
riding splendidly, but gray like Lee, drew their swords and gave the
proud and flashing salute of the saber as they went by. Lee and his
staff almost with involuntary impulse returned the salute in like
fashion. Then the Invincibles passed on, and were lost from view in the
depths of the forest.

Harry felt a sudden constriction of the heart. He knew that he might
never see Colonel Leonidas Talbot nor Lieutenant-Colonel Hector
St. Hilaire again, nor St. Clair, nor Happy Tom either.

But his friends could not remain long in his mind at such a time.
They were marching, marching swiftly, the presence of the man on the
great white horse seeming to urge them on to greater speed. As the stars
came out Lee's brow, which had been seamed by thought, cleared. His plan
which he had formed in the day was moving well. His three corps were
bearing away toward the old battlefield of Chancellorsville. Grant would
be drawn into the thickets of the Wilderness as Hooker had been the year
before, although a greater than Hooker was now leading the Army of the
Potomac.

Harry, who foresaw it all, thrilled and shuddered at the remembrance.
It was in there that the great Jackson had fallen in the hour of supreme
triumph. Not far away were the heights of Fredericksburg, where Burnside
had led the bravest of the brave to unavailing slaughter. As Belgium had
been for centuries the cockpit of Europe, so the wild and sterile region
in Virginia that men call the Wilderness became the cockpit of North
America.

While Lee and his a