Riding over the billowing fields, mounting the grassy hills, threading the matchless forests of uncut timber, he sees all. He sits plotting and dreaming on the porch by the lake side. Thousands of horses and cattle, now crossed and improved, are wealth wandering at will on every side. Hardin's dark eyes grow eager and envious. He gazes excitedly on this lordly domain. Suppose Valois should never come back. This would be a royal heritage. He puts the maddening thought away. Within a few miles, mill and flume tell of the tracing down of golden quartz lodes. The pick breaks into the hitherto undisturbed quartz ledges of Mariposa gold. Is there gold to be found here, too? Perhaps. Only an old prating priest, a simple woman, and an infant, between him and these thousands of rich acres, should Valois be killed. Philip Hardin becomes convinced of final defeat, as 1863 draws to a close. The days of Gettysburg and Vicksburg ring the knell of the Confederacy. Even the prestige of Chancellorsville, with its sacred victory sealed with Stonewall Jackson's precious blood, was lost in the vital blow delivered when the columns of Longstreet and Pickett failed to carry the heights of Gettysburg. The troops slain on that field could never be replaced. Boyhood and old age, alone, were left to fill the vacant ranks. Settling slowly down, the gloomy days of collapse approach. While Lee skilfully faced the Army of the Potomac, and the Confederacy was drained of men to hold the "sacred soil," the Western fields were lit up by the fierce light of Grant and Sherman's genius. Like destroying angels, seconded by Rosecrans, Thomas, and McPherson, these great captains drew out of the smoke of battle, gigantic figures towering above all their rivals. Maxime Valois bitterly deplored the uselessness of the war in the trans-Mississippi section of the Confederacy. It is too late for any Western divisions to affect the downward course of the sacred cause for which countless thousands have already died. The Potomac armies of the Union, torn with the dissensions of warring generals, wait for the days of the inscrutable Grant and fiery Philip Sheridan. In the West, the eagle eye of Rosecrans has caught the weakness of the unguarded roads to the heart of the Confederacy.