Harry told him, also giving him a written message, which the general read by the light of a torch an aide held.

“You can tell General Lee that all my men will be in position for battle before dawn,” said the Georgian crisply.

Even as he spoke, Harry heard the heavy, regular tread of the brigades marching forward through the Wilderness.  He saluted General Longstreet.

“I shall return at once with your message,” he said.

But Harry, having had one such experience, was resolved not to risk another.  He would make a wider circuit in the rear of the army.  Shepard, on foot, and anxious to avenge his defeat, might be waiting for him, but he would go around him.  So when he started back he made a wide curve, and soon was in the darkness and silence again.

He had a good horse and his idea of direction being very clear he rode swiftly in the direction he had chosen.  But his curve was so great that when he reached the center of it he was so far in the rear of the army that no sound came from it.  If the skirmishers were still firing the reports of their rifles were lost in the distance.  Where he rode the only noises were those made by the wild animals that inhabited the Wilderness, creatures that had settled back into their usual haunts after the armies had passed beyond.

Once a startled deer sprang from a clump of bushes and crashed away through the thickets.  Rabbits darted from his path, and an owl, wondering what all the disturbance was about, hooted mournfully from a bough.

Long before dawn Harry reached the Southern sentinels in the center and was then passed to General Lee, who remained at the same camp, sitting on a log by some smothered coals.  Several other members of his staff had returned already, and the general, looking up when Harry came forward, merely said: 

“Well!”

“I have seen General Longstreet, sir,” said Harry, “and he bids me tell you that he and his men will be in position before dawn.  He was nearly up when I left, and he has also sent you this note.”

He handed the note to General Lee, who, bending low over the coals, read it.

“Everything goes well,” he said with satisfaction.  “We shall be ready for them.  What time is it, Peyton?”

“Five minutes past four o’clock, sir.”

“Then I think the attack should come within an hour.”

“Perhaps before daybreak, sir.”

“Perhaps.  And even after the sun begins to rise it will be like twilight in this gloomy place.”

Grant, in truth, prompt and ready as always, had ordered the advance to be begun at half-past four, but Meade, asking more time for arrangements and requesting that it be delayed until six, he had consented to a postponement until five o’clock and no more.

Harry had one more message to carry, a short distance only, and on his return he found the Invincibles posted on the commander-in-chief’s right, and not more than two hundred yards away.