Chapter 16

THE CLOSING DAYS

Within the Southern lines and just beyond the range of the Northern guns, two men sat playing chess. They were elderly, gray and thin, but never had the faces of the two colonels been more defiant. With the Confederacy crumbling about them it was characteristic of both that they should show no despair, if in truth they felt it. Their confidence in Lee was sublime. He could still move mountains, although he had no tools with which to move them, and the younger officers, mere boys many of them, would come back to them again and again for encouragement. Spies had brought word that Grant, after nine months of waiting, and with Sheridan and a huge cavalry force on his flank, was about to make his great attack. But the dauntless souls of Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant Colonel Hector St. Hilaire remained unmoved.

"I'm glad the rains are apparently about to cease, Hector," said Colonel Talbot. "When the ground grows firmer it will give General Lee a chance to make one of his great circling swoops, and rout the Yankee army."

"So it will, Leonidas. We've been waiting for it a long time, but the chance is here at last. We've had enough of the trenches. It's a monotonous life at best. Ah, I take your pawn, the one for which I've been lying in ambush more than a month."

"But that pawn dies in a good cause, Hector. When he fell, he uncovered the path to your remaining knight, as a dozen more moves will show you. What is it, Harry?"

Harry Kenton, thin, but hardy and strong, saluted.

"We have news, sir," he replied, "that the portion of the Union army under General Sheridan is moving. I bring you a dispatch from General Lee to march and meet them. Other regiments, of course, will go with you."

They put away the chessmen and with St. Clair and Langdon marshaled the troops in line of battle. Harry felt a sinking of the heart when he saw how thin their ranks were, but the valiant colonels made no complaint. Then he went back to General Lee, whose manner was calm in face of the storm that was so obviously impending. The information had come that Grant and the bulk of his army were marching to the attack on the White Oak road, and, if he broke through there, nothing could save the Army of Northern Virginia.

Harry, after taking the dispatch to the Invincibles, carried orders to another regiment, while Dalton was engaged on similar errands. It was obvious to him that Lee was gathering his men for a great effort, and his heart sank. There was not much to gather. Throughout all that long autumn and winter the Army of Northern Virginia had disintegrated steadily. Nobody came to take the place of the slain, the wounded and the sick. All the regiments were skeletons. Many of them could not muster a hundred men apiece.

But Harry saw no sign of discouragement on the face of the chief whom he