But even after the deed was drawn up, it lay on his desk for two days; and then it was only the apprehension that Southerland might present himself to Virginia, that induced the lawyer to conclude the purchase. When he reached Wheeling, and Southerland saw the deed, he was not a little surprised. But he was an excellent man of business himself, in all that the term could imply by the most liberal construction that could be put upon it; and he decided that the smooth-faced lawyer was a sharp hand himself; and made no comment. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE IT was an April morning, mild and warm, in the rutted roads, in the pillaged, trampled fields the sassafras and honey-locust had claimed for their abiding place, two armies were drawn up. Between them, skirmishers moved with the brisk rattle of musketry; while at intervals dull echoes woke to flow reverberatingly across the wasted land. Suddenly the firing ceased. The long line of advancing men in blue halted. The enemy was withdrawing and was rapidly disappearing from view in the direction of Appomattox Court House. In front of many of the regiments the officers had formed in groups, and from group to group spread the news that the expected battle was not to be fought. “A white flag,” one would say, and then they would fall to shaking hands, silently, ceremoniously. If there was any doubt expressed, there was the answer ready: “It's so—I tell you it's so! They got it from a staff-officer who said it was so!” Further afield small parties of men, medical attendants, and stretcher-bearers, were moving to and fro, gathering in the wounded who had fallen on the skirmish line. At one point, on the edge of a strip of woodland, lounged the members of a company that had been recalled from the front. Their captain had gone down into the woods, fifty yards distant perhaps, to a spring that gushed out of a bank at the foot of an old oak. This captain was Stephen Landray. Having satisfied his thirst he now sat on the trunk of a fallen tree with a battered tin-cup held idly in his hand. There was nothing of the boy left; and in other ways as well, the physical strain, the hardship, and the suffering he had endured had told on him. His skin was dry and sallow and his worn uniform hung loosely to his erect, nervous figure. Now and again his glance sought the men on the edge of the wood. He had seen soldiers resting before in their intervals of inaction, but he realized that there was a difference now; some subtle change had taken place in their mental relation to their surroundings that said as plainly as words—it is over. Yet curiously enough the realization of this seemed not entirely satisfactory. With it had come a sense of loss at the sudden withdrawal of a purpose, that had been all absorbing and to which they had clung tenaciously; but now that the accomplishment of this purpose was immanent they seemed to feel only the loss of what for four years had been the main motive in their lives.