Harry obeyed promptly, and they opened the stable, finding good horses, of which they selected the two best to which they changed their saddles and bridles.
“We'll leave our own horses for our inhospitable friends,” said General Jackson, “and he'll not suffer by the exchange.”
Mounting the fresh horses they rode rapidly, and, after the coming of the dawn, Harry saw that they were approaching Richmond, and he guessed now what was coming.
General Jackson had in his pocket a pass sent to him by General Lee, and they swiftly went through the lines of pickets, and then on through Richmond. People were astir in the streets of the Southern capital, and many of them saw the bearded man in an old uniform and a black slouch hat riding by, accompanied by only a boy, but not one of them knew that this was Stonewall Jackson, whose fame had been filling their ears for a month past. Nor, if they had known him would they have divined how much ill his passage boded to the great army of McClellan.
They went through Richmond and on toward the front. Midday passed, and at three o'clock they reached the house in which Lee had established his headquarters.
“Who is it?” asked a sentinel at the door.
“Tell General Lee that General Jackson is waiting.”
The sentinel hurried inside, General Jackson and his aide dismounted, and a moment later General Lee came out, extending his hand, which Jackson clasped. The two stood a moment looking at each other. It was the first time that they had met in the war, but Harry saw by the glance that passed that each knew the other a man, not an ordinary man, nor even a man of ten thousand, but a genius of the kind that appears but seldom. It was all the more extraordinary that the two should appear at the same time, serving together in perfect harmony, and sustaining for so long by their united power and intellect a cause that seemed lost from the first.
It was not any wonder that Harry gazed with all his eyes at the memorable meeting. He knew Jackson, and he was already learning much of Lee.
He saw in the Confederate commander-in-chief a man past fifty, ruddy of countenance, hair and beard short, gray and thick, his figure tall and powerful, and his expression at once penetrating and kind. He was dressed in a fine gray uniform, precise and neat.