What did they mean? What did those strange words mean? It was the
first time in a year, perhaps, that he had thought of that old, old
woman, and the log house in the mountains. But he saw her now, and she
was strangely vivid for one so old and so withered. Then she vanished,
and for the time was forgotten completely, because Lee and Jackson were
riding past, one on Traveler and the other on Little Sorrel, and it
was no time to be dreaming of glens in the mountains and their peace,
because mighty armies were closing in, bent upon the destruction of each
other.

All that afternoon Harry heard in a half circle about him the distant
moaning of cannon, and he caught glimpses of galloping horsemen.
Stuart, equally at home on the floor of the ballroom or the field of
battle, was leading his troopers in a daring circuit. When he saw that
the Army of the Potomac was moving toward Chancellorsville he had cut
in on its right flank, taking prisoners, and when a Union regiment had
stood in his way, attempting to bar his path to his own army, he had
ridden over it and gone.

All the time the sinister moaning of the guns on the far horizon never
ceased. It was this distant threat that oppressed Harry more than
anything else. It beat softly on the drums of his ears, and it said
to him continually that his army must make a supreme effort or perish.
General Jackson did not call upon him to do anything, and once he rode
forward with Dalton and looked at Sedgwick's Union masses upon the
plains of Fredericksburg, still protected by the batteries which had
not yet been moved from Stafford Heights. Harry thought, for a while,
that Lee and Jackson would certainly attack there, but night came and
they had made no movement for that purpose.

But before the sun had set Harry with his glasses had been able to
command a wide view. He saw high up in the air three captive balloons,
from which some of Hooker's officers looked upon the Southern
intrenchments. Hooker also had signalmen on every height, and an ample
field telegraph. What Harry did not see he learned from the Southern
scouts. It seemed impossible that Lee and Jackson could break through
the circle of steel, and Hooker thought so, too.

When the red sun set on that last day of April the confidence of the
Northern general was at its height. He had sent word to Sedgwick to
keep a close watch upon the enemy in his front, and if he exposed a weak
point to attack and destroy hi