It was not a long distance to Charlestown, and when they arrived there they dismounted and waited.  Dick saw Colonel Winchester’s face express great expectancy and he must know why they waited, but the youth did not ask him any questions, although his own curiosity increased.

An hour passed, and then a short, thickset, bearded man, accompanied by a small staff, appeared.  Dick drew a deep breath.  It was General Grant, Commander-in-Chief of all the armies of the Union, and Sheridan hastened forward to meet him.  Then the two, with several of the senior officers, went into a house, while the younger men remained outside, and on guard.

“I knew that we were waiting for somebody of importance,” said Warner, “but I didn’t dream that it was the biggest man we’ve got in the field.”

“Didn’t your algebra give you any hint of it?” asked Dick.

“No.  An algebra reasons.  It doesn’t talk and waste its time in idle chatter.”

The young officers with their horses walked back and forth a long time, while Grant and Sheridan talked.  Dick, surprised that Grant had left the trenches before Petersburg and had come so far to meet his lieutenant, felt that the meeting must be momentous.  But it was even more crowded with the beginnings of great events than he thought.  Grant, as he wrote long afterward, had come prepared with a plan of campaign for Sheridan, but, as he wrote, “seeing that he was so clear and so positive in his views I said nothing about this and did not take it out of my pocket.”  It was a quality of Grant’s greatness, like that of Lee, to listen to a lieutenant, and when he thought his plan was better than his own to adopt the lieutenant’s and put his own away.

In that memorable interview, from which such stirring campaigns dated, Grant was impressed more and more by the earnestness and clearness of the famous Little Phil, and, when they parted, he gave him a free rein and an open road.  Sheridan, when they rode away from the conference, was sober and thoughtful.  He was to carry out his own plan, but the full weight of the responsibility would be his, and it was very great for a young man who was not much more than thirty.

But Dick and his comrades felt exultation, and did not try to hide it.  Now that Grant himself had come to see Sheridan the army was bound to move.  Pennington looked toward the South and waved his hand.

“You’ve been waiting for us a long time, old Jube,” he said, “but we’re coming.  And you’ll see and hear our resistless tread.”

“But don’t forget, Frank,” said Warner soberly, “that we’ll have a big bill of lives to pay.  We don’t ride unhurt over the Johnnies.”

“Don’t I know it?” said Pennington.  “Haven’t I been learning it every day for three years?”

Action was prompt as the young officers had hoped.  The very next day after the meeting with his superior, Sheridan prepared to march, and the hopes of Dick and his friends rose very high.  They did not know that daring Southern spies had learned of the meeting of Grant and Sheridan, and Early, judging that it portended a great movement against him, was already consolidating his forces and preparing to meet it.  And Jubal Early was an able and valiant general.