"Our friends, the enemy, have come to pay you their respects," said Harry.
The two colonels rose and bowed profoundly.
"And to invite you to a banquet that is now being prepared not far from here," continued Harry. "It's very tempting, ham, cheese, and other solids, surrounded by many delicacies."
The two colonels looked at each other, and then nodded approval.
"You are to be the personal guests of our army," said Dick, "and we act as the proxies of General Grant."
"I shall always speak most highly of General Grant," said Colonel Leonidas Talbot. "His conduct has been marked by the greatest humanity, and is a credit to our common country, which has been reunited so suddenly."
"But reunited with our consent, Leonidas," said Lieutenant Colonel St. Hilaire. "Don't forget that I, for one, am tired of this war, and so is our whole army. It was a perfect waste of life to prolong it, and with the North reannexed, the Union will soon be stronger and more prosperous than ever."
"Well spoken, Hector! Well spoken. It is perhaps better that North and South should remain together. I thought otherwise for four years, but now I seem to have another point of view. Come, lads, we shall dine with these good Yankee boys and we'll make them drink toasts of their own excellent coffee to the health and safety of our common country."
The group returned to a little hollow, in which Sergeant Whitley and Shepard had built a fire, and where they were already frying strips of bacon and slices of ham over the coals. Shepard and Harry shook hands.
"I may as well tell you now, Mr. Kenton," said Shepard, "that Miss Henrietta Carden, whom you met in Richmond, is my sister, and that it was she who hid in the court at the Curtis house and took the map. Then it was I who gave you the blow."