"Not yet, child, but it will come--cheer up--it's sure to come. You see that he reached Atlanta and delivered my message!" "We are not sure. The city may have fallen, anyhow----" "Yes, yes, but it didn't just fall, anyhow. Sherman took it. He got my message. I know it. I felt it flash through the air from his soul to mine!" His faith and enthusiasm were contagious and Betty returned home with new hope. In half an hour the Committee who were waiting for his resignation from the National Republican ticket filed into his office to receive as they supposed his final surrender. The Chairman rose with doleful countenance: "Since leaving you, Mr. President, we have just heard a most painful and startling announcement from the War Department. We begged you to withhold the new draft for five hundred thousand men until after the election. Halleck informs us of the discovery of a great combination to resist it by armed force and General Grant must detach a part of his army from Lee's front in order to put down this counter revolution. This is the blackest news yet. We trust that you realize the impossibility of your administration asking for indorsement at the polls----" With a sign of final resignation he sat down and the tall, dark figure rose with quick, nervous energy. "I, too, have received important news since I saw you an hour ago." He held the telegram above his head: "I'll read it to you without my glasses. I know it by heart. I have just learned that my administration will be indorsed by an overwhelming majority, that the defeat of George B. McClellan and his platform of failure is a certainty. The war to preserve the Union is a success. The sword has been driven into the heart of the Confederacy. Sherman has captured Atlanta--the Union is saved!" The Committee leaped to their feet with a shout of applause and crowded around him to congratulate and praise the man they came to bury. There was no longer a question of his resignation. The fall of Atlanta would thrill the North. A wave of wild enthusiasm would sweep into the sea the last trace of gloom and despair. They were practical men--else, as rats, they would never have tried to desert their own ship. They knew that the tide was going to turn, but it was a swift tide that could turn before they could! They wrung the President's hands, they shouted his praise, they had always gloried in his administration, but foolish grumblers hadn't been able to see things as they saw them--hence this hue and cry! They congratulated him on his certain triumph and the President watched them go with a quiet smile. He was too big to cherish resentments. He only pitied small men, he never hated them. CHAPTER XL WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE General Grant fired a salute in honor of the Atlanta victory with shotted guns from every battery on his siege lines of thirty-seven miles before Richmond and Petersburg. To Sherman he sent a remarkable message--the kind which great men know how to pen: