and dying men. They lay thickly. Now and again the noise of the
torment of the wounded made itself heard--a most doleful and ghostly
sound coming up like a wail from the Inferno. There were, too, many dead
or dying horses. Others, still unhurt, galloped from end to end of the
field of death. In the wheat-field there were several of the old,
four-footed warriors, who stood and ate of the shocked grain. There
arrived a hush over the battlefield, one of those pauses which occur
between exhaustion and renewed effort, effort at its height. The guns
fell silent, the musketry died away, the gunboats ceased to throw those
great shells. By contrast with the clangour that had prevailed, the
stillness seemed that of a desert waste, a dead world. Over toward a
cross-road there could be made out three figures on horseback. The
captain of Edward's company was an old college mate; lying down with his
men, he now drew himself over the ground and loaned Cary his
field-glass. "It's General Lee and General Jackson and General D. H.
Hill."

A body of grey troops came to occupy a finger of woods below the three
captured guns. "That's Cary's Legion," said the captain. "Here comes the
colonel now!"

The two commands were but a few yards apart. Fauquier Cary, dismounting,
walked up the sedgy slope and asked to speak to his nephew. The latter
left the ranks, and the two found a trampled space beside one of the
great thirty-two pounders. A dead man or two lay in the parched grass,
but there was nothing else to disturb. The quiet yet held over North and
South and the earth that gave them standing room. "I have but a moment,"
said the elder man. "This is but the hush before the final storm. We
came by Jackson's troops, and one of his officers whom I knew at the
Point rode beside me a little way. They all crossed White Oak Swamp by
starlight this morning, and apparently Jackson is again the Jackson of
the Valley. It was a curious eclipse. The force of the man is such that,
while his officers acknowledge the eclipse, it makes no difference to
them. He is Stonewall Jackson--and that suffices. But that is not what
I have to tell--"

"I saw father a moment this morning. He said there was a rumour about
one of the Stonewall regiments--"

"Yes. It was the 65th."

"Cut to pieces?"

"Yes."

"Richard--Richard was not killed?"

"No. But many were. Hairston Breckinridge was killed--and some of the
Thunder Run men--and very many others. Almost destr