Part 8 (2/2)

Suddenly his face grew paler, and his eyes were half closed.

”Well, Mohun,” said Stuart, who was not looking at him; ”I am going to send you across the river on a reconnaissance to-night.”

”All right, general.”

And the officer made the military salute. As he did so, he staggered, and Stuart raised his eyes.

”You are wounded!” he exclaimed.

”A trifle,” laughed Mohun.

But as he spoke, his frame tottered; his face a.s.sumed the hue of a corpse; and he would have fallen, had not Miss Georgia Conway started up unconsciously from the wounded man whom she was attending to, and supported the officer in her arms.

Mohun opened his eyes, and a grim smile came to his pale face.

”A pretty tableau!” I heard him murmur; ”it would do to put in a romance. A cup of tea--or a pistol--that would finish--”

As he uttered these singular words, the blood gushed from his wounded shoulder, his eyes closed, and, his head falling on the bosom of the young girl, he fainted.

X.

THE SLIM ANIMAL.

Fleetwood was the first gun of the great campaign which culminated on the heights of Gettysburg. A week afterward, Lee's columns were in motion toward Pennsylvania.

Was that invasion the dictate of his own judgment? History will answer.

What is certain is, that the country, like the army, shouted ”Forward!”

The people were ablaze with wild enthusiasm; the soldiers flushed with the pride of their great victories of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The authorities at Richmond shared the excitement, and the commissary-general, with unwonted humor, or in sober earnest, indorsed, it is said, upon a requisition for supplies: ”If General Lee wishes rations, let him seek them in Pennsylvania.”

I doubt if the great commander shared the general agitation. I think he aimed to draw Hooker out of Virginia, leaving the rest to Providence.

So he moved toward the Potomac.

The world had called Lee cautious. After this invasion, that charge was not repeated. From first to last audacity seemed the sentiment inspiring him.

With Hooker on the Rappahannock, threatening Richmond, Lee thrust his advance force under Ewell through the Blue Ridge toward Maryland; pushed Longstreet up to Culpeper to support him, and kept only A.P.

Hill at Fredericksburg to bar the road to the Confederate capital.

Hooker wished to advance upon it, but President Lincoln forbade him.

The dispatch was a queer official doc.u.ment.

”In case you find Lee coming to the north of the Rappahannock,” Lincoln wrote, ”I would by no means cross to the south of it. I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, _like an ox jumped half over a fence, and liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other._”

Ludicrous perhaps, but to the point; the ”Rail-Splitter” was not always dignified, but often judicious. Chancellorsville had been defeat--Lee's a.s.sault, foreboded thus by Lincoln, would be death.

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