When the surrender was announced the Union soldiers, shouted, hurrahed, danced and manifested their joy in all sorts of boyish pranks, but it soon passed off, and as they beheld the ragged, starved, wearied and sad-eyed veterans who had followed Lee into the last ditch their joy was turned to pity and sorrow and the blue divided with the gray their rations and they drank coffee from the same tin cups and water from the same canteens! When the papers were all signed and paroles given the confederates and the Union forces formed in line and faced each other. The veterans of Lee advanced until there was but a few yards of space between the lines. “Halt! right dress! front!” was the command from their officers. The Union forces presented arms, the vanquished returned the salute like men and soldiers, stacked their guns, unbuckled their battle-scarred equipments, furled their tattered flags and laid them tenderly across their stacks of muskets, wiped the tears that many of them shed on their coat sleeves and went their way to take up life anew, but never to bear arms against our glorious Union. STACK ARMS. “Stack Arms!” In faltering accents slow And sad, it creeps from tongue to tongue, A broken, murmuring wail of woe, From manly hearts by anguish wrung, Like victims of a midnight dream! We move, we know not how or why! For life and hope like phantoms seem, And it would be relief--to die! CHAPTER XVII. RETRACING THE STEPS. The armies of Grant and Sherman turned their backs on the South and took up their line of march for Washington, where they had been ordered to report for a general review and muster out. We passed through Richmond and retraced our steps over much of the same ground that had been fought over the previous year, and all along the route were reminders of the terrible struggles between the two great armies. Earthworks that had swarmed with soldiers were now deserted. Everywhere there were bleaching bones of horses and men; grinning skulls, disabled artillery caissons, rusty sabres, bayonets, gun-barrels, canteens, haversacks, weather-stained clothing and mounds of earth that marked the resting places of many whose army record was closed with the single word “missing.” We were a jolly lot, however, realizing that our battles, hardships and marches were about over. A COURTEOUS ENEMY. One day on our return march, when the troops had halted for rest, my comrade suggested that we make a reconnaissance and see if we could not find a little something in the eating line to vary the monotony of coffee, hardtack and “salt hoss.” Back from the roadside we espied a comfortable looking house and we made a “bee line” for it. In the doorway stood a woman who returned our salutation of “good afternoon, madame,” with “Go right away from here, Yanks, you’ve killed my boy, Tom, and I don’t want to ever look on a blue coat again.”