"Here, take this," said my Soldier. "Eat it, and when you are rested and have slept go back home."
The soldier took the luncheon gratefully.
"No, Marse George," he answered, "if I get strength to go on I'll follow you and Marse Robert to the last."
He did follow to the last, being killed a few days later at Sailor's Creek, where the parting salute was fired over the grave of the Confederacy.
"They failed and fell, who bade the sun in heaven to stand,
We failed and fell, who set our bars against the progress of the stars,
And stayed the march of Motherland."
Many months before the farewell shot, when some one applied to President Lincoln for a pass to go into Richmond, he gravely replied:
"I don't know about that; I have given passes to about two hundred and fifty thousand men during the last two years to go to Richmond, and not one of them has got there yet."