For the last twenty-four hours Merwyn had watched almost sleeplessly for the outburst to take place.  That strong, confident face indicated no fears that it would ever take place.

A few hours later, he, and all, heard from the army of the Potomac.

When at last it became known that the Confederate army was in full retreat, and, as the North then believed, would be either captured or broken into flying fragments before reaching Virginia, Merwyn faced what he believed to be his fate.

“The country is saved,” he said.  “There will be no revolution at the North.  Thank God for the sake of others, but I’ve lost my chance.”

CHAPTER XXXII.

Blauvelt.

In June, especially during the latter part of the month, Strahan and Blauvelt’s letters to Marian had been brief and infrequent.  The duties of the young officers were heavy, and their fatigues great.  They could give her little information forecasting the future.  Indeed, General Hooker himself could not have done this, for all was in uncertainty.  Lee must be found and fought, and all that any one knew was that the two great armies would eventually meet in the decisive battle of the war.

The patient, heroic army of the Potomac, often defeated, but never conquered, was between two dangers that can be scarcely overestimated, the vast, confident hosts of Lee in Pennsylvania, and Halleck in Washington.  General Hooker was hampered, interfered with, deprived of reinforcements that were kept in idleness elsewhere, and at last relieved of command on the eve of battle, because he asked that 11,000 men, useless at Harper’s Ferry, might be placed under his orders.  That this was a mere pretext for his removal, and an expression of Halleck’s ill-will, is proved by the fact that General Meade, his successor, immediately ordered the evacuation of Harper’s Ferry and was unrestrained and unrebuked.  Meade, however, did not unite these 11,000 men to his army, where they might have added materially to his success, but left them far in his rear, a useless, half-way measure possibly adopted to avoid displeasing Halleck.

It would seem that Providence itself assumed the guidance of this longsuffering Union army, that had been so often led by incompetence in the field and paralyzed by interference at Washington.  Even the philosophical historian, the Comte de Paris, admits this truth in remarkable language.

Neither Lee nor Meade knew where they should meet, and had under consideration various plans of action, but, writes the French historian, “The fortune of war cut short all these discussions by bringing the two combatants into a field which neither had chosen.”  Again, after describing the region of Gettysburg, he concludes:  “Such is the ground upon which unforeseen circumstances were about to bring the two armies in hostile contact.  Neither Meade nor Lee had any personal knowledge of it.”