on which would prevent its carrying out unless he forced it.

This message had come but a few minutes before and it had been received
with silent satisfaction for Grant knew now that Abraham Lincoln and he
were in perfect accord as to the means for swiftly bringing on the end.
But the plans must be well laid and to that end he must leave City Point
within a few hours and go north. And so he was standing at a window of
his headquarters this morning with his eyes resting unseeingly on the
camp, while his cool, quiet mind steadily forged out his schemes.

Unlike the headquarters of "play" armies where all is noise and
confusion and bloodied orderlies throw themselves off of plunging horses
and gasp out their reports, the room in which General Grant did his work
was strangely quiet.

It was a large, square room with high ceiling and wall paper which had
defied all the arts of Europe to render interesting in design. Furniture
was neither plentiful nor comfortable--a slippery, black horse-hair
sofa, a few horse-hair chairs and, at one side of the room, a table and
a desk, littered with papers, maps and files. At the table Grant's
adjutant, Forbes, sat writing. Facing him was the door opening out into
the hallway of the house where two sentries stood on guard. In the
silence which pervaded the room and in the quiet application to the work
in hand there was a perfect reflection of the mind of him who stood
impassive at the window with his back turned, a faint blue cloud of
cigar smoke rising above his head.

A quick step sounded in the corridor--the step of one who bears a
message. An orderly appeared in the doorway, spoke to the two sentries
and was passed in with a salute to Forbes.

"For General Grant," he said, holding out a folded note of white paper.
"Personal from Lieutenant Harris, sir."

At the sound of his name the General turned slowly and accepted the
note which the orderly presented. He took it without haste and yet
without any perceptible loss of time or motion and, as always, without
unnecessary words. Scanning it, he shifted his cigar to one corner of
his mouth where its smoke would not rise into his eyes, thought for an
instant, then nodded shortly.

"I'll see him. At once."

Dismissed, the orderly saluted and passed quickly out. The General, with
his chin in his collar and his cigar held between his fingers at nearly
the same level, moved back to the window and stood there silently as
before. He knew