It was spring, fresh spring everywhere, but the bushes and the grass alike were tinged with red for Harry.  The strange mental illusion that he was riding to Chancellorsville remained with him and he did not seek to shake it off.  He almost expected to see Old Jack ahead on a hill, bent over a little, and sitting on Little Sorrel, with the old slouch hat drawn over his eyes.  They had talked of the ghost of Jackson leading them in the Wilderness.  He shivered.  Could it be so?  All the time he knew it was an illusion, but he permitted it to cast its spell over him, as one who dreams knowingly.

And Harry was dreaming back.  Old Jack, the earlier of his two heroes, was leading them.  He foresaw the long march through the thickets of the Wilderness, Stonewall forming the line of battle in the deep roads late in the evening, almost in sight of Hooker’s camp, the sudden rush of his brigades and then the terrible battle far into the night.

He shook himself.  It was uncanny.  The past was the past.  Dreams were thin and vanished stuff.  Once more he was in the present and saw clearly.  Old Jack was gone to take his place with the great heroes of the past, but the Army of Northern Virginia was there, with Lee leading them, and the most formidable of all the Northern chiefs with the most formidable of all the Northern armies was before them.

He heard the distant thud of hoofs and with instinctive caution drew back into a dense clump of bushes.  A half-dozen horsemen were near and their eager looks in every direction told Harry that they were scouts.  There was little difference then between a well worn uniform of blue or gray, and they were very close before Harry was able to tell that they belonged to Grant’s army.

He was devoutly glad that his horse was trained thoroughly and stood quite still while the Northern scouts passed.  A movement of the bushes would have attracted their attention, and he did not wish to be captured at any time, least of all on the certain eve of a great battle.  After a battle he always felt an extra regret for those who had fallen, because they would never know whether they had won or lost.

They were alert, keen and vigorous men, or lads rather, as young as himself, and they rode as if they had been Southern youths almost born in the saddle.  Harry was not the only one to notice how the Northern cavalry under the whip hand of defeat had improved so fast that it was now a match, man for man, for that of the South.

The young riders rode on and the tread of their hoofs died in the undergrowth.  Then Harry emerged from his own kindly clump of bushes and increased his speed, anxious to reach Ewell, without any more of those encounters.  He made good progress through the thickets, and soon after sundown saw a glow which he took to be that of campfires.  He advanced cautiously, met the Southern sentinels and knew that he was right.