at it some seconds before opening it. Then he read:

MR. KENTON:

I have warned you twice before, once when Jefferson Davis was inaugurated
at Montgomery, and once again in Virginia. I told you that the South
could never win. I told you that she might achieve brilliant victories,
and she may achieve them even yet, but they will avail her nothing.
Victories permit her to maintain her position for the time being, but
they do not enable her to advance. A single defeat causes her to lose
ground that she can never regain.

I tell you this as a warning. Although your enemy, I have seen you more
than once and talked with you. I like you and would save your life if I
could. I would induce you, if I could, to leave the army and return to
your home, but that I know to be impossible. So, I merely tell you that
you are fighting for a cause now lost. Perhaps it is pride on my part to
remind you that my early predictions have come true, and perhaps it is
a wish that the thought I may plant in your mind will spread to others.
You have lost at Gettysburg a hope and an offensive that you can never
regain, and Grant at Vicksburg has given a death blow to the Western half
of the Confederacy.

As for you, I wish you well.

WILLIAM J. SHEPARD.


Harry stared in amazement at this extraordinary communication, and read
it over two or three times. He was not surprised that Shepard should