tgomery, 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.

I tell you this as a warning. Although your enemy, I have seen you more
than once and talked with you. I like you and would save your life if I
could. I would induce you, if I could, to leave the army and return to
your home, but that I know to be impossible. So, I merely tell you that
you are fighting for a cause now lost. Perhaps it is pride on my part to
remind you that my early predictions have come true, and perhaps it is
a wish that the thought I may plant in your mind will spread to others.
You have lost at Gettysburg a hope and an offensive that you can never
regain, and Grant at Vicksburg has given a death blow to the Western half
of the Confederacy.

As for you, I wish you well.

WILLIAM J. SHEPARD.

Harry stared in amazement at this extraordinary communication, and read
it over two or three times. He was not surprised that Shepard should
be near, and that he should have been inside the Confederate lines, but
that he should leave a letter, and such a letter, for him was uncanny.
His first feeling, wonder, was succeeded by anger. Did Shepard really
think that he could influence him in such a way, that he could plant in
his mind a thought that would spread to others of his age and rank and
weaken the cause for which he fought? It was a singular idea, but
Shepard was a singular man.

But perhaps pride in recalling the prediction that he had made long ago
was Shepard's stronger motive, and Harry took fire at that also. The
Confederacy was not beaten. A single defeat--no, it was not a defeat,
merely a failure to win--was not mortal, and as for the West, the
Confederacy would gather itself together there and overwhelm Grant!

Then came a new emotion, a kind of gratitude to Shepard. The man was
really a friend, and would do him a service, if it could be done, without
injuring his own cause! He could not feel any doubt of it, else the spy
would not have taken the risk to send him such a letter. He read it for
the last time, then tore it into little pieces which he entrusted to the
winds.

The