The superscription was in a large, bold hand, and read: 

     Lieutenant Harry Kenton,
          staff of general Robert E. Lee, C. S. A.,
               Commander-in-chief,
                    army of northern Virginia.

He felt instinctively that something uncommon was coming, and, as most people do when they are puzzled at the appearance of a letter, he looked at it some seconds before opening it.  Then he read: 

Mr. Kenton: 

I have warned you twice before, once when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated at Montgomery, and once again in Virginia.  I told you that the South could never win.  I told you that she might achieve brilliant victories, and she may achieve them even yet, but they will avail her nothing.  Victories permit her to maintain her position for the time being, but they do not enable her to advance.  A single defeat causes her to lose ground that she can never regain.

I tell you this as a warning.  Although your enemy, I have seen you more than once and talked with you.  I like you and would save your life if I could.  I would induce you, if I could, to leave the army and return to your home, but that I know to be impossible.  So, I merely tell you that you are fighting for a cause now lost.  Perhaps it is pride on my part to remind you that my early predictions have come true, and perhaps it is a wish that the thought I may plant in your mind will spread to others.  You have lost at Gettysburg a hope and an offensive that you can never regain, and Grant at Vicksburg has given a death blow to the Western half of the Confederacy.

As for you, I wish you well.

WilliamJ. Shepard.

Harry stared in amazement at this extraordinary communication, and read it over two or three times.  He was not surprised that Shepard should be near, and that he should have been inside the Confederate lines, but that he should leave a letter, and such a letter, for him was uncanny.  His first feeling, wonder, was succeeded by anger.  Did Shepard really think that he could influence him in such a way, that he could plant in his mind a thought that would spread to others of his age and rank and weaken the cause for which he fought?  It was a singular idea, but Shepard was a singular man.

But perhaps pride in recalling the prediction that he had made long ago was Shepard’s stronger motive, and Harry took fire at that also.  The Confederacy was not beaten.  A single defeat—­no, it was not a defeat, merely a failure to win—­was not mortal, and as for the West, the Confederacy would gather itself together there and overwhelm Grant!

Then came a new emotion, a kind of gratitude to Shepard.  The man was really a friend, and would do him a service, if it could be done, without injuring his own cause!  He could not feel any doubt of it, else the spy would not have taken the risk to send him such a letter.  He read it for the last time, then tore it into little pieces which he entrusted to the winds.