f their great supply camp, but they had found there no trace of a
Confederate soldier. Was Harry Kenton right, when he told them they
could not beat Jackson? He asked himself angrily why the man would not
stay and fight. He believed, too, that he must be off there somewhere to
the right, and he listened eagerly but vainly for the distant throb of
guns in the east.

A cloud of dust hovered over the ten thousand as they marched on in the
blazing sunshine. The country was well peopled, but all the inhabitants
had disappeared save a few, and from not one of these could they obtain
a scrap of information.

Dick noticed through the dusty veil a heavy wood on their left extending
for a long distance. Then as in a flash, he saw that the whole forest
was filled with troops, and he saw also two batteries galloping from it
toward the crest of a ridge. It occurred to him instantly that here was
the army of Jackson, and others who saw had the same instinctive belief.

There was a flash and roar from the batteries. Shot and shell cut
through the clouds of dust and among the ranks of the men in blue. Now
came from the forest a vast shout, the defiant rebel yell and nobody in
the column doubted that Jackson was there. He had swung away toward the
Gap, where Lee could come to him more readily, and he would fight the
whole Union army until Lee came up.

As the roar of the first discharge from the batteries was dying swarms
of skirmishers sprang up from ambush and poured a storm of bullets upon
the Union front and flanks. A cry as of anguish arose from the column
and it reeled back, but the men, many of them hardy young farmers from
the West, men of staunch stuff, were eager to get at the enemy and the
terrible surprise could not daunt them. Uttering a tremendous shout they
charged directly upon the Southern force.

It was a case largely of vanguards, the main forces not yet having come
up, but the two detachments charged into each other with a courage and
fierceness that was astounding. In a minute the woods and fields were
filled with fire and smoke, and hissing shells and bullets. Men fell by
hundreds, but neither side yielded. The South could not drive away the
North and the North could not hurl back the South.

The field of battle became a terrible and deadly vortex. The fire of the
opposing lines blazed in the faces of each other. Often they were
only three or four score yards apart. Ewell, Jackson's ablest and most
trusted li