“I thought so.  We’re going to have the pleasure of dining with our friends here.  We’ve heard, Captain Kenton, that you people haven’t eaten anything for a month.”

“It’s not that bad,” laughed Harry.  “We had parched corn yesterday.”

“Well, parched corn is none too filling, and we’re going to prepare the banquet at once.  A certain Sergeant Whitley will arrive presently with a basket of food, such as you rebels haven’t tasted since you raided our wagon trains at the Second Manassas, and with him will come one William Shepard, whom you have met often, Mr. Kenton.”

“Yes,” said Harry, “we’ve met often and under varying circumstances, but we’re going to be friends now.”

“Will you tell me, Captain St. Clair,” said Dick, “what has become of the two colonels of your regiment, which I believe you call the Invincibles?”

St. Clair led them silently to a little wood, and there, sitting on logs, Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant Colonel Hector St. Hilaire were bent intently over the chess board that lay between them.

“Now that the war is over we’ll have a chance to finish our game, eh, Hector?” said Colonel Talbot.

“A just observation, Leonidas.  It’s a difficult task to pursue a game to a perfect conclusion amid the distractions of war, but soon I shall checkmate you in the brilliant fashion in which General Lee always snares and destroys his enemy.”

“But General Lee has yielded, Hector.”

“Pshaw, Leonidas!  General Lee would never yield to anybody.  He has merely quit!”

“Ahem!” said Harry loudly, and, as the colonels glanced up, they saw the little group looking down at them.

“Our friends, the enemy, have come to pay you their respects,” said Harry.

The two colonels rose and bowed profoundly.

“And to invite you to a banquet that is now being prepared not far from here,” continued Harry.  “It’s very tempting, ham, cheese, and other solids, surrounded by many delicacies.”

The two colonels looked at each other, and then nodded approval.

“You are to be the personal guests of our army,” said Dick, “and we act as the proxies of General Grant.”

“I shall always speak most highly of General Grant,” said Colonel Leonidas Talbot.  “His conduct has been marked by the greatest humanity, and is a credit to our common country, which has been reunited so suddenly.”

“But reunited with our consent, Leonidas,” said Lieutenant Colonel St. Hilaire.  “Don’t forget that I, for one, am tired of this war, and so is our whole army.  It was a perfect waste of life to prolong it, and with the North reannexed, the Union will soon be stronger and more prosperous than ever.”

“Well spoken, Hector!  Well spoken.  It is perhaps better that North and South should remain together.  I thought otherwise for four years, but now I seem to have another point of view.  Come, lads, we shall dine with these good Yankee boys and we’ll make them drink toasts of their own excellent coffee to the health and safety of our common country.”