“It’s so,” said Dalton.  “We’re to be delivered, and we’re to be delivered without a battle, a battle that we could ill afford, even if we won it.”

Both were in a state of intense anxiety and they looked many times at the sun and their watches.  Then they searched the hostile army with their glasses.  But nothing of moment was stirring there.  Lower and lower sank the sun, and a great thrill ran through the Army of Northern Virginia.  In both armies the soldiers were intelligent men—­not mere creatures of drill—­who thought for themselves, and while those in the Army of Northern Virginia were ready, even eager to fight if it were pushed upon them, they knew the great danger of their position.  Now the word ran along the whole line that if they fought at all it would be on their side of the river.

Harry and Dalton did not sleep that night.  They could not have done so had the chance been offered.  They like others rode all through the darkness carrying messages to the different commands, insuring exact cooperation.  As the hours of the night passed the aspect of everything grew better.  The river had fallen so fast that it would be fordable before morning.

But after midnight the clouds gathered, thunder crashed, lightning played and the violent rain of a summer storm enveloped them again.  Harry viewed it at first with dismay, and then he found consolation.  The darkness and the storm would cover their retreat, as it had covered the retreat of their enemy, Hooker, after Chancellorsville.

Harry and Dalton rode close behind Lee, who sat erect on his white horse, supervising the first movement of troops over the new and shaking bridge.  Harry noted with amazement that despite his enormous exertions, physical and mental, and an intense anxiety, continuous for many days, he did not yet show signs of fatigue.  Word had come that a part of the army was already fording the river, near Williamsport, but this bridge near Falling Waters was the most important point.  General Lee and his staff sat there on their horses a long time, while the rain beat unheeded upon them.

Few scenes are engraved more vividly upon the mind of Harry Kenton than those dusky hours before the dawn, the flashes of lightning, the almost incessant rumble of thunder, the turbid and yellow river across which stretched the bridge, a mere black thread in the darkness, swaying and dipping and rising and creaking as horse and foot, and batteries and ammunition wagons passed upon it.

There were torches, but they flared and smoked in the rain and cast a light so weak and fitful that Harry could not see the farther shore.  The Army of Northern Virginia marched out upon a shaking bridge and disappeared in the black gulf beyond.  Only the lack of an alarm coming back showed that it was reaching the farther shore.

“Dawn will soon be here,” said Dalton.

“So it will,” said Harry, “and most of the troops are across.  Ah, there go the Invincibles!  Look how they ride!”