“Are you sure, sir,” asked St. Clair, “that the ladies don’t really prefer chit chat?”

“I was not speaking of little girls.  I was alluding to those ornaments of their sex who have arrived at years of discretion.  Ah, if Leonidas and I were only a while in Richmond!  It would be the next best thing to being in Charleston.”

“Maybe the Invincibles will be sent there for a while.”

“Perhaps.  I don’t foresee any great activity here in the autumn.  How do they regard the Army of Northern Virginia in Richmond now, Harry?”

“With supreme confidence.”

The talk soon drifted to the people whom Harry had met at the capital, and then he told of his adventure with Shepard, the spy.

“He seems to be a most daring man,” said Talbot; “not a mere ordinary spy, but a man of a higher type.  I think he’s likely to do us great harm.  But the woman, Miss Carden, was surely kind to you.  If she hadn’t found you wandering around in the rain you’d have doubtless dropped down and died.  God bless the ladies.”

“And so say we all of us,” said Harry.

He returned to Richmond in a few days, bearing more dispatches, and to his great delight all that was left of the Invincibles arrived a week later to recuperate and see a little of the world.  St. Clair and Happy Tom plunged at once and with all the ardor of youth into the gayeties of social life, and the two colonels followed them at a more dignified but none the less earnest pace.  All four appeared in fine new uniforms, for which they had saved their money, and they were conspicuous upon every occasion.

Harry was again at the Curtis house, and although it was not a great ball this time the assemblage was numerous, including all his friends.  The two colonels had become especial favorites everywhere, and they were telling stories of the old South, which Harry had divined was passing; passing whether the South won or not.

Although there had been much light talk through the evening and an abundance of real gayety, nearly every member of the company, nevertheless, had serious moments.  The news from Tennessee and Georgia was heavy with import.  It was vague in some particulars, but it was definite enough in others to tell that the armies of Rosecrans and Bragg were approaching each other.  All eyes turned to the West.  A great battle could not be long delayed, and a powerful division of the Army of Northern Virginia under Longstreet had been sent to help Bragg.

Harry found himself late at night once more in that very room in which the map had disappeared so mysteriously.  The two colonels, St. Clair and Langdon, and one or two others had drifted in, and the older men were smoking.  Inevitably they talked of the battle which they foresaw with such certainty, and Harry’s anxiety about it was increased, because he knew his father would be there on one side, and the cousin, for whom he cared so much, would be on the other.