"Well, sir, we shall move out soon. We are moving around a good deal, nowadays. Why aren't you with your regiment?" "Well, you see, General, I am my regiment." "How's that?" "All the men wuz raised 'round hyar. A few days ago they jes' begun nachally droppin' out. They all dun dropped out, General, so I jes' tho't there wan't any use being a cunnel without no troops and I dun dropped out too. Here I be? What you goin' to do with me, General?" "I'm going to leave you here to take care of your property. Don't go back to your army and nobody'll bother you." That was a sample of the way in which the beaten army was melting away. Not even the magic of Lee's great name could hold it together now. But the men who did not drop out fought with heroism to the bitter end. The next day, Saturday, April 8, 1865, Sheridan captured some more of Lee's provision trains at Appomattox Station and on Sunday, April 9, Lee's whole army attacked there, still seeking to cut its way out of its encircling foes. Its brave effort was in vain. Held in a vice, it threw up its hands. A white flag flew above the Confederate lines. Grant had spent Saturday night struggling with a sick headache, his feet in hot water and mustard, his wrists and the back of his neck covered with mustard-plasters. On Sunday morning, still sick and suffering, he was jogging along on horseback towards the front, when a Confederate officer was brought before him. He carried a note from Lee offering to surrender. "When the officer reached me," writes Grant, "I was still suffering with the sick headache; but the instant I saw the contents of the note, I was cured." The ending of the war ended Grant's headache. * * * * * The two commanders met at Appomattox Court House, a sleepy Virginian village, five miles from the railroad and endless miles from the great world. It lies in a happy valley, not wrapped in happiness that April day, for Sheridan's forces held the crest at the south and Lee's were deployed along the hilltop to the north. A two-hour armistice had been granted. If that did not bring the end desired, that end was to be fought out with all the horrors of warfare amid the peaceful houses that had straggled together to make the peaceful little town. At the northern end of the village street, surrounded by an apple orchard, stood a two-story brick house with a white wooden piazza in front of it. It was the home of Wilmer McLean, a Virginia farmer upon whose farm part of the battle of Bull Run had been fought at the outbreak of the war. Foreseeing that other battles might be fought there--as the second battle of Bull Run, in 1862, was--he had sold his property there and had moved by a strange chance to the very village and the very house in which the final scene of the great tragedy of this war between brothers was to be played. Here Lee awaited Grant.