snow melted, the wind continued to blow, the earth
dried--winter was gone and spring in its green robe was coming. The time
of play was over. The armies rose from their sleep in the snows and
began to brush the rust from the cannon. Horses stretched themselves and
generals studied their maps anew. Three years of tremendous war was
gone, but they were prepared for a struggle yet more gigantic.

To those in Richmond able to bear arms was sent an order--"Come at once
to the front"--and among them was Prescott, nothing loath. His mother
kissed him a tearless good-by, hiding her grief and fear under her
Puritan face.

"I feel that this is the end, one way or the other," she said.

"I hope so, mother."

"But it may be long delayed," she added.

To Helen he said a farewell like that of a boy to the girl who has been
his playmate. Although she flushed a little, causing him to flush, too,
deep tenderness was absent from their parting, and there was a slight
constraint that neither could fail to notice.

Talbot was going with him, Wood and Colonel Harley were gone already,
and Winthrop and Raymond said they should be at the front to see. Then
Prescott bade farewell to Richmond, where in the interval of war he had
spent what he now knew to be a golden month or two.

CHAPTER XV

THE GREAT RIVALS

A large man sat in the shadow of a little rain-washed tent one golden
May morning and gazed with unseeing eyes at the rich spectacle spread
before him by Nature. The sky was a dome of blue velvet, mottled with
white clouds, and against the line of the horizon a belt of intense
green told where the forest was springing into new life under the vivid
touch of spring. The wind bore a faint, thrilling odour of violets.

The leader was casting up accounts and trying in vain to put the balance
on his own side of the ledger. He dealt much with figures, but they were
never large enough for his purpose, and with the brave man's faith he
could trust only in some new and strange source of supply. Gettysburg,
that drawn field of glorious defeat, lay behind him, and his foe, as he
knew, was gathering all his forces and choosing his ablest leader that
he might hurl his utmost strength upon these thin battalions. But the
soul of the lonely man rose to the crisis.

Everything about him was cast in a large mould, and the dignity and slow
gravity of his manner added to his size. Thus he was not only a leader,
but he had the look of one-