a great big rolling plain with woods
upon it--no mountains or water--"

"Well, I always thought that if I were a great big thing going to happen
I wouldn't choose a chopped up, picturesque place to happen in! I'd
choose something like this. I--"

"What's that?"

_Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!_

Hooker, at the opposite end of the porch, sprang up and came across.
"Due west!--Howard's guns?--What does that mean--"

_Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!_

Fighting Joe Hooker ran down the steps. "Bring my horse, quick! Colonel,
go down to the road and see--"

"My God! Here they come!"

Down the Plank road, through the woods, back to Chancellorsville, rushed
the routed 21st Corps. Soldiers and ambulances, wagons and cattle,
gunners lacking their guns, companies out of regiments, squads out of
companies, panic-struck and flying units, shouting officers brandishing
swords, horsemen, colour-bearers without colours, others with colours
desperately saved, musicians, sutlers, camp followers, ordnance wagons
with tearing, maddened horses, soldiers and soldiers and soldiers--down,
back to the centre at Chancellorsville, roared the blue wave, torn,
churned to foam, lashed and shattered, broken against a stone wall--back
on the centre roared and fell the flanked right! Down the Plank road,
out of the dark woods of the Wilderness, out of the rolling musketry,
behind it the cannon thunder, burst a sound, a sound, a known sound!
_Yaaaai! Yaaaaaiih! Yaaiii! Yaaaaiiihhhhh!_ It echoed, it echoed from
the east of Chancellorsville! _Yaaih! Yaaaaiih! Yaaaaaaaiihh!_ yelled
the troops of McLaws and Anderson. "Open fire!" said Lee to his
artillery; and to McLaws, "Move up the turnpike and attack."

The Wilderness of Spottsylvania laid aside her mantle of calm. She
became a maenad, intoxicated, furious, shrieking, a giantess in action, a
wild handmaid drinking blood, a servant of Ares, a Titanic hostess
spreading with lavish hands large ground for armies and battles, a
Valkyrie gathering the dead, laying them in the woodland hollows amid
bloodroot and violets! She chanted, she swayed, she cried aloud to the
stars, and she shook her own madness upon the troops, very impartially,
on grey and on blue.

Down the Plank road, in the gathering night, the very fulness of the
grey victory brought its difficulties. Brigades were far ahead,
separated from their division commanders; regiments astray from their
brigadiers, companies st