forward.

"And do you remember I said to you, 'Brice, when you get ready to come
into this war, let me know.' Why didn't you do it?"

Stephen thought a minute. Then he said gravely, but with just a
suspicion of humor about his mouth:-- "General, if I had done that, you
wouldn't be here in my tent to-day."

Like lightning the General was on his feet, his hand on Stephen's
shoulder.

"By gad, sir," he cried, delighted, "so I wouldn't."

CHAPTER VIII. A STRANGE MEETING

The story of the capture of Vicksburg is the old, old story of failure
turned into success, by which man is made immortal. It involves the
history of a general who never retraced his steps, who cared neither
for mugwump murmurs nor political cabals, who took both blame and praise
with equanimity. Through month after month of discouragement, and work
gone for naught, and fever and death, his eyes never left his goal. And
by grace of the wisdom of that President who himself knew sorrow and
suffering and defeat and unjust censure, General Grant won.

Boldness did it. The canal abandoned, one red night fleet and transports
swept around the bend and passed the city's heights, on a red river.
The Parrotts and the Dahlgrens roared, and the high bluffs flung out the
sound over the empty swamp land.

Then there came the landing below, and the cutting loose from a
base--unheard of. Corps behind cursed corps ahead for sweeping the
country clear of forage. Battles were fought. Confederate generals in
Mississippi were bewildered.

One night, while crossing with his regiment a pontoon bridge, Stephen
Brice heard a shout raised on the farther shore. Sitting together on
a log under a torch, two men in slouch hats were silhouetted. That one
talking with rapid gestures was General Sherman. The impassive profile
of the other, the close-cropped beard and the firmly held cigar that
seemed to go with it,--Stephen recognized as that of the strange Captain
Grant who had stood beside him in the street by the Arsenal He had not
changed a whit. Motionless, he watched corps after corps splash by,
artillery, cavalry, and infantry, nor gave any sign that he heard their
plaudits.

At length the army came up behind the city to a place primeval, where
the face of the earth was sore and tortured, worn into deep gorges by
the rains, and flung up in great mounds. Stripped of the green magnolias
and the cane, the banks of clay stood forth in hideous yellow nakedness,
save fo