“Lead on,” said Harry.  “I’m ready, and I’m hungry as every soldier in the Southern army always is.”

They had a warm greeting from their hospitable hosts, followed by an abundant breakfast.  Then at Mrs. Lanham’s earnest solicitation they turned over their dress uniforms to her to be repaired and pressed.  Then they went out into the streets again, and spent the whole day rambling about, enjoying everything with the keen and intense delight that can come only to the young, and after long abstinence.  Richmond was not depressed.  Far from it.  There had been a wonderful transformation since those dark days when the army of McClellan was near enough to see the spires of its churches.  The flood of battle had rolled far away since then, and it had never come back.  It could never come back.  It was true that the Army of Northern Virginia had failed at Gettysburg, but it was returning to the South unassailed, and was ready to repeat its former splendid achievements.

Harry went to the post office, and found there, to his great surprise and delight, a letter from his father, written three or four days after Vicksburg.

My dear son:  [he wrote]

The news has just come to us that the Army of Northern Virginia, while performing prodigies of valor, has failed to carry all the Northern positions at Gettysburg.  Only complete success could warrant a further advance.  I assume therefore that General Lee is retreating and I assume also that you, Harry, my beloved son, are alive, that you came unharmed out of that terrible battle.  It does not seem possible to me that it could be otherwise.  I cannot conceive of you fallen.  It may be that it’s because you are my son.  The sons of others may fall, but not mine, just as we know that all others are doomed to die, but get into the habit of thinking ourselves immortal.  So, I address this letter to you in the full belief that it will reach you somewhere, and that you will read it.

You know, of course, of our great loss at Vicksburg.  It is disastrous but not irreparable.  We still have a powerful army in the West, hardy, indomitable, one with which the enemy will have to reckon.  As for myself I have been spared in many battles and I am well.  It seems the sport of chance that you and I, while fighting on the same side, should have been separated in this war, you in the East and I in the West.  But it has been done by One who knows best, and after all I am glad that you have been in such close contact with two of the greatest and highest-minded soldiers of the ages, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.  I do not think of them merely as soldiers, but as knights and champions with flaming swords.  One of them, alas! is gone, but we have the other, and if man can conquer he will.  Here in the West we repose our faith in Lee, as surely as do you in the East, you who see his face and hear his voice every day.

I have had two or three letters from Pendleton.  That part of the State is for the present outside the area of conflict, though I hear that the guerilla bands to the east in the mountains still vex and annoy, and that Skelly is growing bolder.  I foresee the time when we shall have to reckon with this man, who is a mere brigand.