During all the time that Cowperwood had been building himself up thus steadily the great war of the rebellion had been fought almost to its close.

It was now October, 1864.

The capture of Mobile and the Battle of the Wilderness were fresh memories.

Grant was now before Petersburg, and the great general of the South, Lee, was making that last brilliant and hopeless display of his ability as a strategist and a soldier.

There had been times--as, for instance, during the long, dreary period in which the country was waiting for Vicksburg to fall, for the Army of the Potomac to prove victorious, when Pennsylvania was invaded by Lee--when stocks fell and commercial conditions were very bad generally.