ces, sir!
General Anderson is coming into action--"

A deeper thunder rolling now through the Wilderness corroborated his
words. "Good! good!" said Jackson imperturbably. "My compliments to
General Hill, and he will detach Archer's and Thomas's brigades and a
battalion of artillery. They are to cooperate with General Anderson and
protect our rear. The remainder of the Light Division will continue the
march."

On past the noon point swung light and shadow. On through the languorous
May warmth travelled westward the long column. It went with marked
rapidity, emphatic even for the "foot cavalry," went without swerving,
without straggling, went like a long, gleaming thunderbolt firmly held
and swung. Behind it, sank in the distance the noise of battle. The Army
of Northern Virginia knew itself divided, cut in two. Far back in the
flowering woods before Chancellorsville, the man on the grey horse,
directing here, directing there his twelve thousand men, played his
master game with equanimity, trusting in Stonewall Jackson rushing
toward the Federal right. Westward in the Wilderness, swiftly nearing
the Brock road, the man on the sorrel nag travelled with no backward
look. In his right hand was the thunderbolt, and near at hand the place
from which to hurl it. He rode like incarnate Intention. The officer
beside him said something as to that enormous peril in the rear, driving
like a wedge between this hurrying column and the grey twelve thousand
before Chancellorsville. "Yes, sir, yes!" said Jackson. "But I trust
first in God, and then in General Lee."

The infantry swung into the Brock road. It ran northward; it lay bare,
sunny, sleepy, walled in by emerald leaves and white and purple bloom.
The grey thunderbolt travelled fast, fast, and at three o'clock its head
reached the Plank road. Far to the east, in the Wilderness, the noise of
the battle yet rolled, but it came fainter, with a diminishing sound.
Anderson, Thomas, and Archer had driven back Sickles. There was a pause
by Chancellorsville and Catherine Furnace. Through it and all the while
the man on grey Traveller kept with a skill so exquisite that it shaded
into a grave simplicity those thousands and thousands and thousands of
hostile eyes turned quite from their real danger, centred only on a
finely painted mask of danger.

At the intersection of the Brock and the Plank roads, Stonewall Jackson
found massed the 1st Virginia cavalry. Upon the road and to either