Lee and his
older aides, Taylor and Peyton and Marshall, slept also. Around them the
brigades, too, lay sleeping.
A while before dawn a large man in Confederate uniform, using the soft,
lingering speech of the South, appeared almost in the center of the army
of Northern Virginia. He knew all the pass words and told the officers
commanding the watch that the wing under Ewell was advancing more rapidly
than any of the others. Inside the line he could go about almost as he
chose, and one could see little of him, save that he was large of figure
and deeply tanned, like all the rest.
He approached the little opening in which Lee and his staff lay, although
he kept back from the sentinels who watched over the sleeping leader.
But Shepard knew that it was the great Confederate chieftain who lay in
the shadow of the oak and he could identify him by the glances of the
sentinels so often directed toward the figure.
There were wild thoughts for a moment or two in the mind of Shepard.
A single bullet fired by an unerring hand would take from the Confederacy
its arm and brain, and then what happened to himself afterward would not
matter at all. And the war would be over in a month or two. But he put
the thought fiercely from him.
Pages:
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323