his brigade be moved instantly to his support.

When the shock came there were five regiments and six little field
pieces in the Southern ranks to meet McDowell's sixteen thousand
troops.

With deafening roar their artillery opened. The long dense lines of
closely packed infantry began their steady firing in volleys. It sounded
as if some giant hand had grasped the hot Southern skies and was tearing
their blue canvas into strips and shreds.

For an hour Bee's brigade withstood the onslaught of the two Federal
divisions--and then began to slowly fall back before the resistless wall
of fire. The Union army charged and drove the broken lines a half mile
before they rallied.

Tyler's division now swept across the Stone Bridge and the shattered
Confederate left wing was practically surrounded by overwhelming odds.
Again the storm burst on the unsupported lines of Bee and drove them
three quarters of a mile before they paused.

The charging Federal army had struck something they were destined to
feel again on many a field of blood.

General T. J. Jackson had suddenly swung his brigade of five regiments
into the breach and stopped the wave of fire.

Bee rushed to Jackson's side.

"General," he cried pathetically, "they are beating us back!"

The somber blue eyes of the Virginian gleamed beneath the heavy lashes:

"Then sir, we will give them the bayonet!"

Bee turned to his hard-pressed men and shouted:

"See Jackson and his Virginians standing like a stone wall! Let us
conquer or die!"

The words had scarcely passed his lips when Bee fell, mortally wounded.

Four miles away on the top of a lonely hill sat Beauregard and Johnston
befogged in a series of pitiable blunders.

The flanking of the Southern army was a complete and overwhelming
surprise. Johnston, unacquainted with the ground, had yielded the
execution of the battle to his subordinate.

While the two puzzled generals were waiting on their hill top for their
orders of battle to be developed on the right they looked to the left
and the whole valley was a boiling hell of smoke and dust and flame.
Their left flank had been turned and the triumphant enemy was rolling
their long line up in a shroud of flame and death.

The two Generals put spurs to their horses and dashed to the scene of
action, sending their couriers flying to countermand their first orders.
They reached the scene at the moment Bee's and Evans' shattered lines
were taking refuge in a