usands could scarcely be heard.

The ranks were strung out in long, ragged lines, each man going as he
pleased. Something blocked the way ahead and the columns butted into one
another and pinched the heels of the men in front.

In their anger the fellows smarting with pain forgot the orders for
silence. A storm of low muttering and growling rumbled through the
darkness.

"What 'ell here!"

"What's the matter with you----"

"Keep off my heels!"

"What 'ell are ye runnin' over me for?"

"Hold up your damned gun----"

"Keep it out of my eye, won't you?"

"Damn your eye!"

They start again and run into a bog of mud knee deep cut into mush by
the artillery and wagons which have passed on.

The first men in line were in to their knees and stuck fast before they
could stop the lines surging on in the dark. They collide with the
bogged ones and fall over them. The ranks behind stumble in on top of
the fallen before word can be passed to halt.

The night reeks with oaths. The patient heavens reverberate with them.
The mud-soaked soldiers damned with equal unction all things visible and
invisible on the earth, under it and above it. They cursed the United
States of America and they damned the Confederate States with equal
emphasis and wished them both at the bottom of the lowest depths of the
deepest pit of perdition.

As one fellow blew the mud from his mouth and nose he bawled:

"I wish Sherman and Hood were both in hell this minute!"

"Yes, and fightin' it out to suit themselves!" his comrade answered.

On through the black night the long blue lines crept under lowering
skies toward their foe, the stern face of William Tecumseh Sherman
grimly set on his desperate purpose.

CHAPTER XXXIX

VICTORY

Betty had found the President at the War Telegraph office in the old
Army and Navy building. He was seated at the desk by the window where in
1862 he had written his first draft of his Emancipation Proclamation on
pieces of pasteboard.

"You have heard nothing yet from General Sherman?" she asked
pathetically.

"Nothing, child."

"And no message of any kind from John Vaughan since he left!" she
exclaimed hopelessly.

"But I'm sure, remember, sure to a moral certainty--that he reached
Richmond safely and left there safely."

"How do you know?"

"Gilmore has just arrived with his reply from Jefferson Davis. It will
be worth a half million votes for us. From his description of the
'reporter' wi