. The Furnace road, the Brock
road, then turn eastward on the Plank road and strike their flank.
Good!" He jerked his hand into the air. "I will go now, general."

Lee bent across again. The two clasped hands. "God be with you, General
Jackson!"

"And with you, General Lee."

Little Sorrel left the hillock. The staff came up. Stonewall Jackson
turned in his saddle, and, the staff following his action, raised his
hand in salute to the figure on grey Traveller, above them in the
sunlight. Lee lifted his hat, held it so. The others filed by, turned
sharply southward, and were lost in the jewelled Wilderness.

The sun cleared the tallest pines; there set in a splendid day. The long,
long column, cavalry, Rodes's Division, the Light Division, the artillery,
ordnance wagons and ambulances, twenty-five thousand grey soldiers with
Stonewall Jackson at their head--the long, long column wound through the
Wilderness by narrow, hidden roads. Close came the scrub and pine and all
the flowering trees of May. The horsemen put aside vine and bough, the pink
honeysuckle brushed the gun wheels; long stretches of the road were
grass-grown. Through the woods to the right, by paths nearer yet to the
far-flung Federal front, paced ten guardian squadrons. All went silently,
all went swiftly. In the Confederate service there were no automata. These
thousands of lithe, bronzed, bright-eyed, tattered men knew that something,
something, something was being done! Something important that they must all
help Old Jack with. Forbidden to talk, they speculated inwardly. "South by
west. 'T isn't a Thoroughfare Gap march. They're all here in the
Wilderness. We're leaving their centre--their right's somewhere over there
in the brush. Shouldn't wonder--Allan Gold, what's the Latin for 'to
flank'?--Lieutenant, we were just whispering! Yes, sir.--All right, sir. We
won't make no more noise than so many wet cartridges!"

On they swung through the fairy forest, grey, steady, rapidly moving,
the steel above their shoulders gleaming bright, the worn, shot-riddled
colours like flowers amid the tender, all-enfolding green. The head of
the column came to a dip in the Wilderness through which flowed a little
creek. It was about nine o'clock in the morning. All the men looked to
the right, for they could see the plateau of Hazel Grove and the great
Federal intrenchments. "If those fellows look right hard they can see
us, too! Can't help it--march fast and get pas