But I must go on with my story.  I went straight to General Grant’s headquarters,—­just a plain, rough slat house such as a contractor might build for a temporary residence.  Only the high flagstaff and the Stars and Stripes distinguish it from many others of the same kind.  A group of officers stood chatting outside of it, and they told me that the General had walked over to get his mail.  He is just as unassuming and democratic as “my general.”  General Rankin took me into the office, a rude room, and we sat down at the long table there.  Presently the door opened, and a man came in with a slouch hat on and his coat unbuttoned.  He was smoking a cigar.  We rose to our feet, and I saluted.

It was the general-in-chief.  He stared at me, but said nothing.

“General, this is Major Brice of General Sherman’s staff.  He has brought despatches from Goldsboro,” said Rankin.

He nodded, took off his hat and laid it on the table, and reached out for the despatches.  While reading them he did not move, except to light another cigar.  I am getting hardened to unrealities,—­perhaps I should say marvels, now.  Our country abounds in them.  It did not seem so strange that this silent General with the baggy trousers was the man who had risen by leaps and bounds in four years to be general-in-chief of our armies.  His face looks older and more sunken than it did on that day in the street near the Arsenal, in St. Louis, when he was just a military carpet-bagger out of a job.  He is not changed otherwise.  But how different the impressions made by the man in authority and the same man out of authority!

He made a sufficient impression upon me then, as I told you at the time.  That was because I overheard his well-merited rebuke to Hopper.  But I little dreamed that I was looking on the man who was to come out of the West and save this country from disunion.  And how quietly and simply he has done it, without parade or pomp or vainglory.  Of all those who, with every means at their disposal, have tried to conquer Lee, he is the only one who has in any manner succeeded.  He has been able to hold him fettered while Sherman has swept the Confederacy.  And these are the two men who were unknown when the war began.

When the General had finished reading the despatches, he folded them quickly and put them in his pocket.

“Sit down and tell me about this last campaign of yours, Major,” he said.

I talked with him for about half an hour.  I should rather say talked to him.  He is a marked contrast to Sherman in this respect.  I believe that he only opened his lips to ask two questions.  You may well believe that they were worth the asking, and they revealed an intimate knowledge of our march from Savannah.  I was interrupted many times by the arrival of different generals, aides, etc.  He sat there smoking, imperturbable.  Sometimes he said “yes” or “no,” but oftener he merely nodded his head.  Once he astounded by a brief question an excitable young lieutenant, who floundered.  The General seemed to know more than he about the matter he had in hand.