ling and terrible memories.

There lay the blackened ruins of Fredericksburg. There were the heights
against which the brave Northern brigades had beat in vain and with such
awful losses. And beyond, far down under the horizon, was the tragic
Wilderness in which they had won Chancellorsville and in which Jackson
had fallen. Harry choked and turned away from the fresh wound that the
recollection gave him.

Lee and his staff rode hard all that afternoon and most of the night
through territory guarded well against Northern skirmishers or raiding
bands, and the next day they were with the army at Culpeper Court House.
Meanwhile Hooker was undecided whether to follow Lee or move on
Richmond. But the shrewd Lincoln telegraphed him that Lee was his "true
objective." At that moment the man in the White House at Washington was
the most valuable general the North had, knowing that Lee in the field
with his great fighting force must be beaten back, and that otherwise
Richmond would be worth nothing.

It was Harry's fortune in the most impressionable period of life to be
in close contact for a long time with two very great men, both of whom
had a vast influence upon him, creating for him new standards of energy
and conduct. In after years when he thought of Lee and Jackson, which
was nearly every day, no weighing of the causes involved in the quarrel
between the sections was made in his mind. They were his heroes,
and personally they could do no wrong.

As Lee rode on with his staff through the fair Virginia country he
talked little, but more than was Jackson's custom. Harry saw his brow
wrinkle now and then with thought. He knew that he was planning,
planning all the time, and he knew, too, what a tremendous task it was
to bring all the scattered divisions of an army to one central point
in the face of an active enemy. This task was even greater than Harry
imagined, as Lee's army would soon be strung along a line of a hundred
miles, and a far-seeing enemy might cut it apart and beat it in detail.
Lee knew, but he showed no sign.

Harry felt an additional elation because he rode westward and toward
that valley in which he had followed Jackson through the thick of
great achievements. In the North they had nicknamed it "The Valley of
Humiliation," but Jackson was gone, and Milroy, whom he had defeated
once, was there again, holding and ruling the little city of Winchester.
Harry's blood grew hot, because he, too, as J