"Go ahead then and say it to me."
"You say to General Lee that it's all over. Tell him to quit and send his soldiers home. If he doesn't he'll be crushed."
Harry laughed again and waved his finger at the somber battlefield, upon which he stood.
"Does this look like it?" he asked. "We're farther forward to-night than we were this morning. Wouldn't General Grant be glad if he could say as much?"
"It makes no difference. I know you don't believe me, but it's so. The North is prepared as it never was before. And Grant will hammer and hammer forever. We know what a man Lee is. The whole North admits it, but I tell you the sun of the South is setting."
"You're growing poetical and poetry is no argument."
"But unlimited men, unlimited cannon and rifles, unlimited ammunition and supplies and a general who is willing to use them, are. Of course I know that you can't carry any such message to General Lee, but I feel it to be the truth."
"We've a great general and a great army that say, no."
Nobody paid any attention to the two. It was merely another one of those occasions when men of the opposing sides stood together amid the dead and wounded, and talked in friendly fashion. But Harry knew that he could not delay long.
"I've got to go, Dick," he said. "And I've a message too, one that I want you to deliver to General Grant."