Here Harry sighed and remembered his own forebodings.  Oh, if only a Stonewall Jackson had been there!  His mighty sweep would have driven Thomas and the rest in a wild rout.  A tear rose in his eye as he remembered his lost hero.  He sincerely believed then and always that the Confederacy would have won had he not fallen on that fatal evening at Chancellorsville.  It was an emotion with him, a permanent emotion with which logic could not interfere.

Harry was conscious, too, that the long quiet on the Eastern front was but a lull.  There was nothing to signify peace in it.  If the North had ever felt despair about the war Gettysburg and Vicksburg had removed every trace of it.  He knew that beyond the blue ranges of mountains, both to east and west, vast preparations were going forward.  The North, the region of great population, of illimitable resources, of free access to the sea, and of mechanical genius that had counted for so much in arming her soldiers, was gathering herself for a supreme effort.  The great defeats of the war’s first period were to be ignored, and her armies were to come again, more numerous, better equipped and perhaps better commanded than ever.

Nevertheless, his mind was still the mind of youth, and he could not dwell continuously upon this prospect.  The camp in the hills was pleasant.  The heats had passed, and autumn in the full richness of its coloring had come.  The forests blazed in all the brilliancy of red and yellow and brown.  The whole landscape had the color and intensity that only a North American autumn can know, and the October air had the freshness and vitality sufficient to make an old man young.

The great army of youth—­it was composed chiefly of boys, like the one opposing it—­enjoyed itself during these comparatively idle months.  The soldiers played rural games, marbles even, pitching the horseshoe, wrestling, jumping and running.  It was to Harry like Hannibal in winter quarters at Capua, without the Capua.  There was certainly no luxury here.  While food was more abundant than for a long time, it was of the simplest.  Instead of dissipation there was a great religious revival.  Ministers of different creeds, but united in a common object, appeared in the camp, and preached with power and energy.  The South was emotional then and perhaps the war had made it more so.  The ministers secured thousands of converts.  All day long the preaching and singing could be heard through the groves of pine and cedar, and Harry knew that when the time for battle came they would fight all the better because of it.  Yielding to the enemy was no part of the Christianity that these ministers preached.