that gave beneath the feet, flush with the stream itself, the grey
guns, now in place upon the low ridge to the right, opened, thirty-one
of them, with simultaneous thunder. Crutchfield's manoeuvre had not
been observed. The thirty-one guns blazed without warning, and the blue
artillery fell into confusion. The Parrotts blazed in turn, four times,
then they limbered up in haste and left the ridge. Crutchfield sent
Wooding's battery tearing down the slope to the road immediately in
front of the burned bridge. Wooding opened fire and drove out the
infantry support from the opposite forest. Jackson, riding toward the
stream, encountered Munford. "Colonel, move your men over the creek and
take those guns."

Munford looked. "I don't know that we can cross it, sir."

"Yes, you can cross it, colonel. Try."

Munford and a part of the 2d Virginia dashed in. The stream was in truth
narrow enough, and though it was deep here, with a shifting bottom, and
though the debris from the ruined bridge made it full of snares, the
horsemen got across and pushed up the shore toward the guns. A thick and
leafy wood to the right leaped fire--another and unsuspected body of
blue infantry. The echoes were yet ringing when, from above, an unseen
battery opened on the luckless cavalry. The blue rifles cracked again,
the horses began to rear and plunge, several men were hit. There was
nothing to do but to get somehow back to the north bank. Munford and his
men pushed out of the rain of iron, through the wood for some distance
down the stream, and there recrossed, not without difficulty.

The thirty-one guns shelled the wood which had last spoken, and drove
out the skirmishers with whom it was filled. These took refuge in
another deep and leafy belt still commanding the stream and the ruined
causeway. A party of grey pioneers fell to work to rebuild the bridge.
From the crest on the southern side behind the deep foliage two Federal
batteries, before unnoted, opened on the grey cannoneers. Wooding, on
the road before the bridge, had to fall back. Under cover of the guns
the blue infantry swarmed again into the wood. Shell and bullet hissed
and pattered into the water by the abutments of the ruined bridge. The
working party drew back. "Damnation! They mustn't fling them minies
round loose like that!"

Wright's brigade of Huger's division came up. Wright made his report.
"We tried Brackett's ford a mile up stream, sir. Couldn't manage it. Got
tw