And so he was standing at a window of his headquarters this morning with his eyes resting unseeingly on the camp, while his cool, quiet mind steadily forged out his schemes.
Unlike the headquarters of "play" armies where all is noise and confusion and bloodied orderlies throw themselves off of plunging horses and gasp out their reports, the room in which General Grant did his work was strangely quiet.
It was a large, square room with high ceiling and wall paper which had defied all the arts of Europe to render interesting in design.

Furniture was neither plentiful nor comfortable--a slippery, black horse-hair sofa, a few horse-hair chairs and, at one side of the room, a table and a desk, littered with papers, maps and files.

At the table Grant's adjutant, Forbes, sat writing.

Facing him was the door opening out into the hallway of the house where two sentries stood on guard.

In the silence which pervaded the room and in the quiet application to the work in hand there was a perfect reflection of the mind of him who stood impassive at the window with his back turned, a faint blue cloud of cigar smoke rising above his head.
A quick step sounded in the corridor--the step of one who bears a message.