“We’d better go, George,” said Harry. “I think we only waste time asking questions of such a forgetful family.”
“It iss so,” said Onderdonk; “but, young Mister Rebels, I remember one thing.”
“And what is that?” asked Dalton.
“It vas a piece of advice dot I ought to gif you. You tell dot General Lee to turn his horse’s head and ride back to der South. You are good young rebels. I can see it by your faces. Ride back to der South, I tell you again. We are too many for you up here. Der field uf corn iss so thick und so long dot you cannot cut your way through it. Your knife may be sharp and heavy, but it vill vear out first. Do I not tell the truth, Vilhelmina, mein vife?”
“All your life you haf been a speaker of der truth, Hans, mein husband.”
“I think you’re a poor prophet, Mr. Onderdonk,” said Dalton. “We recognize, however, the fact that we can’t get any information out of you. But we ask one thing of you.”
“Vat iss dot?”
“Please to remember that while we two are rebels, as you call them, we neither burn nor kill. We have offered you no rudeness whatever, and the Army of Northern Virginia is composed of men of the same kind.”
“I vill remember it,” said Onderdonk gravely, and as they saluted him politely, he returned the salute.
“Not a bad fellow, I fancy,” said Harry, as they rode away.
“No, but our stubborn enemy, all the same. Wherever our battle is fought we’ll find a lot of these Pennsylvania Dutchmen standing up to us to the last.”
Harry and Dalton rejoined the staff, bringing with them no information of value, and they marched slowly on another day, camping in the cool of the evening, both armies now being lost to the anxious world that waited and sought to find them.
Lee himself, as Harry gathered from the talk about him, was uncertain. He did not wish a battle now, but his advance toward the Susquehanna had been stopped by the news that the Army of the Potomac could cut in behind. The corps of Ewell had been recalled, and Harry, as he rode to it with a message from his general, saw his old friends again. They were in a tiny village, the name of which he forgot, and Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire, sitting in the main room of what was used as a tavern in times of peace, had resumed the game of chess, interrupted so often. Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire was in great glee, just having captured a pawn, and Colonel Talbot was eager and sure of revenge, when Harry entered and stated that he had delivered an order to General Ewell to fall back yet farther.
“Most untimely! Most untimely!” exclaimed Colonel Talbot, as they rapidly put away the board and chessmen. “I was just going to drive Hector into a bad corner, when you came and interrupted us.”
“You are my superior officer, Leonidas,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, “but remember that this superiority applies only to military rank. I assert now, with all respect to your feelings, that in regard to chess it does not exist, never has and never will.”
“Opinions, Hector, are-opinions. Time alone decides whether they are or are not facts. But our corps is to fall back, you say, Harry? What does it signify?”
“I think, Colonel, that it means a great battle very soon. It is apparent that General Lee thinks so, or he would not be concentrating his troops so swiftly. The Army of the Potomac is somewhere on our flank, and we shall have to deal with it.”
“So be it. The Invincibles are few but ready.”
Harry rode rapidly back to Lee with the return message from Ewell, and found him going into camp on the eve of the last day of June. The weather was hot and scarcely any tents were set, nearly everybody preferring the open air. Harry delivered his message, and General Lee said to him, with his characteristic kindness:
“You’d better go to sleep as soon as you can, because I shall want you to go on another errand in the morning to a place called Gettysburg.”