ached Front Royal a courier, riding hard, overtook them.
He demanded to be taken at once to the presence of General Sheridan,
and then he presented a copy of a dispatch which read:

To Lieutenant-General Early:

Be ready to move as soon as my forces join you, and we will
crush Sheridan.
Longstreet, Lieutenant-General.

Sheridan read the dispatch over and over again, and pondered it gravely.
The courier informed him that it was the copy of a signal made by the
Confederate flags on Three Top Mountain, and deciphered by Union officers
who had obtained the secret of the Confederate code. General Wright,
whom he had left in command, had sent it to him in all haste for what it
was worth.

The young general not only pondered the message gravely, but he pondered
it long. Finally he called his chief officers around him and consulted
with them. If the grim and bearded Longstreet were really coming into
the valley with a formidable force, then indeed it would be the dance
of death. Longstreet, although he did not have the genius of Stonewall
Jackson, was a fierce and dangerous fighter. All of them knew how he
had come upon the field of Chickamauga with his veterans from Virginia,
and had turned the tide of battle. His presence in the valley might
quickly turn all of Sheridan's great triumphs into withered laurels.

But Sheridan had a great doubt in his mind. The Confederate signal from
Three Top Mountain that his own officers had read might not be real.
It might have been intended to deceive, Early's signalmen learning that
the Union signalmen had deciphered their code, or it might be some sort
of a grim joke. He did not believe that the Army of Northern Virginia
could spare Longstreet and a large force, as it would be weakened so
greatly that it could no longer stand before Grant, even with the aid of
the trenches.

His belief that this dispatch, upon which so much turned, as they were to
learn afterward, was false, became a conviction and most of his officers
agreed with him. He decided at last that the coming of Longstreet with
an army into the valley was an impossibility, and he would go on to
Washington. But Sheridan made a reservation, and this, too, as the event
showed, was highly important. He ordered all the cavalry back to General
Wright, while he proceeded with a small escort to the capital.

It was Dick who first learned what had happened, and soon all knew.
They discusse