“I’ve spent most of my time learning to walk again, and getting the bows out of my legs,” said Dick.  “I’ve been a-horse so long that I felt like a sailor coming ashore from a three years’ cruise.”

“Agreed with me pretty well, all except the mud, since I was born on horseback,” said Pennington.  “But I don’t like to ride in a brown plaster suit of armor.  What do you think is ahead, boys?”

“Junction with General Grant,” said Dick.  “They say, also, that General Sherman, after completing his great work in Georgia and North Carolina, is coming to join them too.  It will be a great meeting, that of the three successful generals who have destroyed the Confederacy, because there’s nothing of it left now but Lee’s army, and that they say is mighty small.”

It was in reality a triumphant march that they began after they left White House, refreshed, remounted and ready for new conquests.  They soon came into touch with the Army of the Potomac, and the great meeting between Grant, Sherman and Sheridan took place, Sherman having come north especially for the purpose.  Then Sheridan’s force became attached to the Army of the Potomac, and his cavalry columns advanced into the marshes about Petersburg.  All fear that they would be sent to cooperate with Sherman passed, and Dick knew that the Winchester men would be in the final struggle with Lee, a struggle the success of which he felt assured.

April was not far away.  The fierce winter was broken up completely, but the spring rains were uncommonly heavy and much of the low country about Petersburg was flooded, making it difficult for cavalry and impossible for infantry.  Nevertheless the army of Grant, with Sheridan now as a striking arm, began to close in on the beleaguered men in gray.  Lee had held the trenches before Petersburg many months, keeping at bay a resolute and powerful army, led by an able and tenacious general, but it was evident now that he could not continue to hold them.  Sheridan’s victorious force on his flank made it impossible.

The Winchester men were in a skirmish or two, but for a few days most of their work was maneuvering, that is, they were continually riding in search of better positions.  At times, the rain still poured, but the three young captains were so full of expectancy that they scarcely noticed it.  Dick often heard the trumpets singing across the marshes, and now and then he saw the Confederate skirmishers and the roofs of Petersburg.  He beheld too with his own eyes the circle of steel closing about the last hope of the Confederacy, and he felt every day, with increasing strength, that the end was near.

But the outside world did not realize that the great war was to close so suddenly.  It had raged with the utmost violence for four years and it seemed the normal condition in America.  Huge battles had been fought, and they had ended in nothing.  Three years before, McClellan had been nearer to Richmond than Grant now was, and yet he had been driven away.  Lee and Jackson had won brilliant victories or had held the Union numbers to a draw, and to those looking from far away the end seemed as distant as ever.  At that very moment, they were saying in Europe that the Confederacy was invincible, and that it was stronger than it had been a year or two years earlier.