in our uniform, whom I didn't know."

"Probably a dispatch that I'm to carry to General Lee."

"No, sir. It's addressed to you."

The note was written in pencil on a piece of coarse gray paper, folded
several times, but with a face large enough to show Harry's name upon it.
He wondered, but said nothing to the sentinel, and did not look at the
note again, until he had ridden some distance.

He stopped in a little glade where the moonlight fell clearly. He still
heard scattered firing behind him, but he knew that the skirmish was
in reality over, and he concluded that no further attempt by Union
detachments to advance would be made in the face of such vigilance.
He could report to General Lee that the rear of his army was safe.
So he would delay and look at the letter that had come to him out of the
mysterious darkness.

The superscription was in a large, bold hand, and read:


LIEUTENANT HARRY KENTON,
STAFF OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE, C. S. A.,
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF,
ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA.


He felt instinctively that something uncommon was coming, and, as most
people do when they are puzzled at the appearance of a letter, he looked