he would certainly write, and there
was Confederate communication between Eastern Tennessee and Northern
Virginia.

It was thus with a sinking heart that he watched the diminishing heap.
Many of the disappointed ones had already gone away, hopeless, and Harry
felt like following them, but the major picked up a thick letter in a
coarse brown envelope and called:

"Lieutenant Henry Kenton, staff of Lieutenant-General Thomas Jonathan
Jackson."

Harry sprang forward and seized his letter. Then he found a place
behind a big tree, where St. Clair, Langdon and Dalton were reading
theirs, and opened it. He had already seen that the address was in his
father's handwriting and he believed that he was alive. The letter
must have been written after the battle of Stone River or it would have
arrived earlier. He took a hurried glance at the date and saw that it
was near the close of January, at least three weeks after the battle.
Then all apprehension was gone.

It was a long letter, dated from headquarters near Chattanooga,
Tennessee. Colonel Kenton had just heard of the battle of Fredericksburg
and he was rejoicing in the glorious victory. He hoped and believed
that his son had passed through it safely. The Southern army had not
been so successful in the west as in the east, but he believed that they
had met tougher antagonists there, the men of the west and northwest,
used to all kinds of hardships, and, alas! their own Kentuckians.
At both Perryville and Stone River they had routed the antagonists
who met them first, but they had been stopped by their own brethren.

Harry smiled and murmured to himself:

"You can never put down dad's state pride. With him the Kentuckians are
always first."

He had a good deal of this state pride himself, although in a less
accentuated form, and, after the momentary thought, he went on. The
colonel was looking for a letter from his son--Harry had written twice
since Fredericksburg, and he knew now that the letters would arrive
safely. He himself had been wounded slightly in a skirmish just after
Stone River, but he was now entirely well. The Southern forces were
gathering and General Bragg would have a great army with which they
were confident of winning a victory like that of the Second Manassas or
Fredericksburg. He was glad that his son was on the staff of so great a
genius as General Jackson and that he was also under the command of that
other great genius, Lee.

Harry s