ce, and they hung on the
flanks of the Southern army, incessantly harrying it, cutting off
companies and regiments, giving the worn and wounded men no respite.

Along a vast, curving line that steadily bent in toward Richmond--the
Southern army inside, the Northern army outside--the sound of the cannon
scarcely ever ceased, night or day. Lee fought with undiminished skill,
always massing his thin ranks at the point of contact and handling them
with the old fire and vigour; but his opponent never ceased the terrible
hammering that he had begun more than a year ago. Grant intended to
break through the shell of the Southern Confederacy, and it was now
cracking and threatening to shatter before his ceaseless strokes.

The defenders of a lost cause, if cause it was, scarcely ever knew what
it was to draw a free breath. When they were not fighting, they were
marching, often on bare feet, and of the two they did not know which
they preferred. They were always hungry; they went into battles on empty
stomachs, came out with the same if they came out at all, and they had
no time to think of the future. They had become mere battered machines,
animated, it is true, by a spirit, but by a spirit that could take no
thought of softness. They had respected Grant from the first; now,
despite their loss by his grim tactics, they looked in wonder and
admiration at them, and sought to measure the strength of mind that
could pay a heavy present price in flesh and blood in order to avoid a
greater price hereafter.

Prescott and Talbot were with the last legion. The bullets, after
wounding them so often, seemed now to give them the right of way. They
came from every battle and skirmish unhurt, only to go into a new one
the next day.

"If I get out of all this alive," said Talbot, with grim humour, "I
intend to eat for a month and then sleep for a year; maybe then I'll
feel rested."

Wood, too, was always there with his cavalry, now a thin band, seeking
to hold back the horsemen of the North, and Vincent Harley, ever a good
soldier, was his able second.

In these desperate days Prescott began to feel respect for Harley; he
admired the soldier, if not the man. There was no danger too great for
Harley, no service too arduous. He slept in the saddle, if he slept at
all, and his spirit never flinched. There was no time for, him to renew
his quarrel with Prescott, and Prescott was resolved that it should
never be renewed if there were any dec