“That bein’ settled,” said Jones, “what do you gen’rals reckon to do jest now, after havin’ finished your big sleep?”

“Your wagon is about to lose the first two passengers it has ever carried,” replied Harry.  “Orderlies have our horses somewhere.  We belong on the staff of General Lee.”

“An’ you see him an’ hear him talk every day?  Some people are pow’ful lucky.  I guess you’ll say a lot about it when you’re old men.”

“We’re going to say a lot about it while we’re young men.  Good-by, Mr. Jones.  We’ve been in some good hotels, but we never slept better in any of them than we have in this moving one of yours.”

“Good-by, you’re always welcome to it.  I think Marse Bob is on ahead.”

The two left the wagon and took to a path beside the road, which was muddy and rutted deeply by innumerable hoofs and wheels.  But grass and foliage were now dry after the heavy rains that followed the Battle of Gettysburg, and the sun was shining in late splendor.  The army, taking the lack of pursuit and attack as proof that the enemy had suffered as much as they, if not more, was in good spirits, and many of the men sang their marching songs.  A band ahead of them suddenly began to play mellow music, “Partant Pour La Syrie,” and other old French songs.  The airs became gay, festive, uplifting to the soul, and they tickled the feet of the young men.

“The Cajun band!” exclaimed Harry.  “It never occurred to me that they weren’t all dead, and here they are, playing us into happiness!”

“And the Invincibles, or what’s left of them, won’t be far away,” said Dalton.

They walked on a little more briskly and beside them the vast length of the unsuccessful army still trailed its slow way back into the South.  The sun was setting in uncommon magnificence, clothing everything in a shower of gold, through which the lilting notes of the music came to Harry and Dalton’s ears.  Presently the two saw them, the short, dark men from far Louisiana, not so many as they had been, but playing with all the fervor of old, putting their Latin souls into their music.

“And there are the Invincibles just ahead of them!” exclaimed Dalton.  “The two colonels have left the wagon and are riding with their men.  See, how erect they sit.”

“I do see them, and they’re a good sight to see,” said Harry.  “I hope they’ll live to finish that chess game.”

“And fifty years afterward, too.”

A shout of joy burst from the road, and a tall young man, slender, dark and handsome, rushed out, and, seizing the hands of first one and then the other, shook them eagerly, his dark eyes glittering with happy surprise.

“Kenton!  Dalton!” he exclaimed.  “Both alive!  Both well!”

It was young Julien de Langeais, the kinsman of Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, and he too was unhurt.  The lads returned his grasp warmly.  They could not have kept from liking him had they tried, and they certainly did not wish to try.