South was beginning
to press tighter and tighter during that memorable winter. At every
Southern port the Northern fleets were on guard, and the blockade
runners slipped past at longer and longer intervals. It was the same on
land; everywhere the armies of the North closed in, and besides fire and
sword, starvation now threatened the Confederacy.

There was not much news from the field to dispel the gloom in the South.
The great battle of Chickamauga had been won not long before, but it was
a barren victory. There were no more Fredericksburgs nor
Chancellorsvilles to rejoice over. Gettysburg had come; the genius of
Lee himself had failed; Jackson was dead and no one had arisen to take
his place.

There were hardships now more to be feared than mere battles. The men
might look forward to death in action, and not know what would become of
the women and children. The price of bread was steadily rising, and the
value of Confederate money was going down with equal steadiness.

The soldiers in the field often walked barefoot through the snow, and in
summer they ate the green corn in the fields, glad to get even so
little; but they were not sure that those left behind would have as
much. They were conscious, too, that the North, the sluggish North,
which had been so long in putting forth its full strength, was now
preparing for an effort far greater than any that had gone before. The
incompetent generals, the tricksters and the sluggards were gone, and
battle-tried armies led by real generals were coming in numbers that
would not be denied.

At such a time as this, when the cloud had no fragment of a silver
lining, the spirit of the South glowed with its brightest fire--a
spectacle sometimes to be seen even though a cause be wrong.

"Mother," said Prescott, and there was a touch of defiance in his tone,
"do you not know that the threat of cold and hunger, the fear that those
whom we love are about to suffer as much as ourselves, will only nerve
us to greater efforts?"

"I know," she replied, but he did not hear her sigh.

He felt that his stay in Richmond was now shortening fast, but there was
yet one affair on his mind to which he must attend, and he went forth
for a beginning. His further inquiries, made with caution in the
vicinity, disclosed the fact that Miss Charlotte Grayson, the occupant
of the wooden cottage, and the Miss Charlotte Grayson whom his mother
had in mind, were the same. But he could discover littl