ink and paper and dispatched a courier
immediately to General Grant. The reply was in two words:

"Unconditional surrender."

Pillow crossed the river under cover of the night and made his way into
the country.

Floyd offered to take Dick Welford on board the little steamer.

"No, thank you," the young Virginian answered curtly.

"You prefer to surrender?"

"I'm not going to surrender. I'm going to join Col. Forrest's cavalry
and fight my way out."

With a wave of his arm Floyd hurried on board the steamer and fled to
Nashville.

Dick had seen Forrest lead one of his matchless charges of cavalry in
their fight that day. With a handful of men he had cut his way through
a solid mass of struggling infantry and thrown them into confusion.

He had watched this grave, silent, unobtrusive man of humble birth and
little education with the keenest interest. He felt instinctively that
he was a man of genius. From to-day he knew that as a leader of cavalry
he had few equals. He had pointed out to his superiors in their council
of war a possible path of escape by a road partially overflowed along
the river banks. It was judged impracticable.

In the darkness of the freezing night Dick rode behind his silent new
commander along this road with perfect faith. Forrest threw his command
into Nashville and saved the city from anarchy when the dreaded news of
the fall of Donelson precipitated a panic.

The South had met her first crushing defeat--a defeat more disastrous
than the North had suffered at Bull Ran. Grant had lost three thousand
men but the Confederate garrisons had been practically wiped out with
the loss of more than fifteen thousand muskets, every big gun and
thirteen thousand prisoners of war.

When Grant met Buckner, the victor and vanquished quietly shook hands.
They had been friends at West Point.

"Why didn't you attack me on Friday?" the Northerner asked.

"I was not in command."

"If you had, my reenforcements could not possibly have reached me in
time."

Buckner smiled grimly.

"In other words a little more promptness on one side, a little less
resolute decision on the other--and the tables would have been turned!"

"That's just it," was the short answer.

It was an ominous day for the South. Bigger than the loss of the capital
of Tennessee which Johnston evacuated the next day, bigger than the
loss of fifteen thousand men and their guns loomed the figure of a new
Federal commander. Out of t