ed. Here the remorseless sharpshooters lay. Human
life had become a little thing, and after a difficult shot they
exchanged remarks as hunters do when they kill a bird on the wing.

If ever there was a "No Man's Land," it was the space between the two
armies which had aptly been called the "Plain of Death." Any one who
ventured upon it thought very little of this life, and it was well that
he should, as he had little of it left to think about. The armies had
lain there for weeks and weeks, facing each other in a deadlock, and a
fierce winter, making the country an alternation of slush and snow, had
settled down on both. The North could not go forward; the South could
not thrust the North back; but the North could wait and the South could
not. Lee's army, crouching behind the earthen walls, grew thinner and
hungrier and colder as the weeks passed. Uniforms fell away in rags,
supplies from the South became smaller and smaller, but the lean and
ragged army still lay there, grim and defiant, while Grant, with the
memory of Cold Harbour before him, dared not attack. He bided his time,
having shown all the qualities that were hoped of him and more.
Tenacious, fertile in ideas, he had been from the beginning the one to
attack and his foe the one to defend. The whole character of the war had
changed since he came upon the field. He and Sherman were now the two
arms of a vise that held the Confederacy in its grip and would never let
go.

Prescott crouched behind the low wall, reading a letter from his mother,
while his comrades looked enviously at him. A letter from home had long
since become an event. Mrs. Prescott said she was well, and, so far as
concerned her physical comfort, was not feeling any excessive stress of
war. They were hearing many reports in Richmond from the armies. Grant,
it was said, would make a great flanking movement as soon as the warmer
weather came, and the newspapers in the capital gave accounts of vast
reinforcements in men and supplies he was receiving from the North.

"If we know our Grant, and we think we do, he will certainly move," said
Prescott grimly to himself, looking across the "Plain of Death" toward
the long Northern line.

Then his mother continued with personal news of his friends and
acquaintances.

* * * * *

"The popularity of Lucia Catherwood lasts," she wrote. "She would avoid
publicity, but she can scarcely do it without offending the good peopl