“Each army has been trying to catch the other napping,” said Dalton.

“And neither has succeeded,” said Harry.

“Now we make a race for the Spottsylvania ridge,” said Dalton.  “You see if we don’t!  I know this country.  It’s a strong position there, and both generals want it.”

Dalton was right.  A small Union force had already occupied Spottsylvania, but the heavy Southern division crossing the narrow, but deep, river Po, drove it out and seized the defensive position.

Here they rested, while the masses of the two armies swung toward them, as if preparing for a new battlefield, one that Harry surveyed with great interest.  They were in a land of numerous and deep rivers.  Here were four spreading out, like the fingers of a human hand, without the thumb, and uniting at the wrist.  The fingers were the Mat, the Ta, the Po, and the Nye, and the unit when they united was called the Mattopony.

Lee’s army was gathering behind the Po.  A large Union force crossed it on his flank, but, recognizing the danger of such a position, withdrew.  Lee himself came in time.  Hill, overcome by illness and old wounds, was compelled to give up the command of his division, and Early took his place.  Longstreet also was still suffering severely from his injuries.  Lee had but few of the able and daring generals who had served him in so many fields.  But Stuart, the gay and brilliant, the medieval knight who had such a strong place in the commander-in-chief’s affections, was there.  Nor was his plumage one bit less splendid.  The yellow feather stood in his hat.  There was no speck or stain on the broad yellow sash and his undimmed courage was contagious.

But Harry with his sensitive and imaginative mind, that leaped ahead, knew their situation to be desperate.  His opinion of Grant had proved to be correct.  Although he had found in Lee an opponent far superior to any other that he had ever faced, the Union general, undaunted by his repulse and tremendous losses in the Wilderness, was preparing for a new battle, before the fire from the other had grown cold.

He knew too that another strong Union army was operating far to the south of them, in order to cut them off from Richmond, and scouts had brought word that a powerful force of cavalry was about to circle upon their flank.  The Confederacy was propped up alone by the Army of Northern Virginia, which having just fought one great battle was about to begin another, and by its dauntless commander.

The Southern admiration for Lee, both as the general and as the man, can never be shaken.  How much greater then was the effect that he created in the mind of impressionable youth, looking upon him with youth’s own eyes in his moments of supreme danger!  He was in very truth to Harry another Hannibal as great, and better.  The long list of his triumphs, as youth counted them, was indeed superior to those of the great Carthaginian, and he believed that Lee would repel this new danger.