Harry and Dalton decided to imitate his example and sleep between the blankets under the pines.  Harry found a soft place, spread his blankets and in a few minutes slept soundly.  In fact, the whole Army of Northern Virginia was a great family that retired early, slept well and rose early.

The next morning there was frost on the grass, but the lads were so hardy that they took no harm.  The autumn deepened.  The leaves blazed for a while in their most vivid colors and then began to fall under the strong west winds.  Brown and wrinkled, they often whirled past in clouds.  The air had a bite in it, and the soldiers built more and larger fires.

The Army of Northern Virginia never before had been quiescent so long.  The Army of the Potomac was not such a tremendous distance away, but it seemed that neither side was willing to attack, and as the autumn advanced and began to merge into winter the minds of all turned toward the Southwest.

For the valiant soldiers encamped on the Virginia hills the news was not good.  Grant, grim and inflexible, was deserving the great name that was gradually coming to him.  He had gathered together all the broken parts of the army defeated at Chickamauga and was turning Union defeat into Union victory.

Winter closed in with the knowledge that Grant had defeated the South disastrously on Lookout Mountain and all around Chattanooga.  Chickamauga had gone for nothing, the whole flank of the Confederacy was turned and the Army of Northern Virginia remained the one great barrier against the invading legions of the North.  Yet the confidence of the men in that army remained undimmed.  They felt that on their own ground, and under such a man as Lee, they were invincible.

In the course of these months Harry, as a messenger and often as a secretary, was very close to Lee.  He wrote a swift and clear hand, and took many dispatches.  Almost daily messages were sent in one direction or another and Harry read from them the thoughts of his leader, which he kept locked in his breast.  He knew perhaps better than many an older officer the precarious condition of the Confederacy.  These letters, which he took from dictation, and the letters from Richmond that he read to his chief, told him too plainly that the limits of the Confederacy were shrinking.  Its money declined steadily.  Happy Tom said that he had to “swap it pound for pound now to the sutlers for groceries.”  Yet it is the historical truth that the heart of the Army of Northern Virginia never beat with more fearless pride, as the famous and “bloody” year of ’63 was drawing to its close.

The news arrived that Grant, the Sledge Hammer of the West, had been put by Lincoln in command of all the armies of the Union, and would come east to lead the Army of the Potomac in person, with Meade still as its nominal chief, but subject, like all the others, to his command.