"Yes, sir. It was handed to me about fifteen minutes ago by a large man in our uniform, whom I didn't know."
"Probably a dispatch that I'm to carry to General Lee."
"No, sir. It's addressed to you."
The note was written in pencil on a piece of coarse gray paper, folded several times, but with a face large enough to show Harry's name upon it. He wondered, but said nothing to the sentinel, and did not look at the note again, until he had ridden some distance.
He stopped in a little glade where the moonlight fell clearly. He still heard scattered firing behind him, but he knew that the skirmish was in reality over, and he concluded that no further attempt by Union detachments to advance would be made in the face of such vigilance. He could report to General Lee that the rear of his army was safe. So he would delay and look at the letter that had come to him out of the mysterious darkness.
The superscription was in a large, bold hand, and read:
LIEUTENANT HARRY KENTON,
STAFF OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, C. S. A.,
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF,
ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA.
He felt instinctively that something uncommon was coming, and, as most people do when they are puzzled at the appearance of a letter, he looked at it some seconds before opening it. Then he read:
MR. KENTON:
I have warned you twice before, once when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated at Montgomery, and once again in Virginia. I told you that the South could never win. I told you that she might achieve brilliant victories, and she may achieve them even yet, but they will avail her nothing. Victories permit her to maintain her position for the time being, but they do not enable her to advance. A single defeat causes her to lose ground that she can never regain.