oetry is no argument."

"But unlimited men, unlimited cannon and rifles, unlimited ammunition and
supplies and a general who is willing to use them, are. Of course I know
that you can't carry any such message to General Lee, but I feel it to be
the truth."

"We've a great general and a great army that say, no."

Nobody paid any attention to the two. It was merely another one of those
occasions when men of the opposing sides stood together amid the dead and
wounded, and talked in friendly fashion. But Harry knew that he could
not delay long.

"I've got to go, Dick," he said. "And I've a message too, one that I
want you to deliver to General Grant."

"What is it?"

"Tell him that we've more than held our own to-day, and that we'll thrash
him like thunder to-morrow, and whenever and wherever he may choose,
no matter what the odds are against us."

Dick laughed.

"I see that you won't believe even a little bit of what I tell you,"
he said "and maybe if I were in your place I wouldn't either. But it's
true all the same. Good-by, Harry."

The two hands, covered with battle grime, met again in the strong grasp
of blood kindred and friendship.

"Take care of yourself, old man!"

The words, exactly alike, were uttered by the two simultaneously.

Both were stirred deeply. Harry sprang on his horse, looked back once,
waving his hand, and rode rapidly to General Lee. Later in the night,
he received permission to hunt up the Invincibles, his heart full of fear
that they had perished utterly in the gloomy pit called the Wilderness,
lit now only by the fire of death.

He left his horse with an orderly and walked toward the point where he
had last seen them. He passed thousands of soldiers, many wounded,
but silent as usual, while the unhurt were sleeping where they had
dropped. The Invincibles were not at the point where he had seen them
last, and the colonels of several scattered regiments could not tell him
what had become of them. But he continued to seek them although the fear
was growing in his heart that the last man of the Invincibles had died
under the Northern cannon.

His search led toward the enemy's lines. Almost unconsciously he went in
that direction, however, his knowledge of the two colonels telling him
that they would take the same course. He turned into a little cove,
partly sheltered by the dwarfed trees and he heard a thin voice saying:

"Nonsense, Leonidas. I scarcely felt it, but