ruggling in the dusk through the thickets,
seeking the thread from which in the onset and uproar the beads had
slipped. They lost themselves in the wild place; there came perforce a
pause, a quest for organization and alignment, a drawing together, a
compressing of the particles of the thunderbolt; then, then would it be
hurled again, full against Chancellorsville!

The moon was coming up. She silvered the Wilderness about Dowdall's
Tavern. She made a pallor around the group of staff and field officers
gathered beside the road. Her light glinted on Stonewall Jackson's
sabre, and on the worn braid of the old forage cap. A body of cavalry
passed on its way to Ely's Ford. Jeb Stuart rode at the head. He was
singing. "_Old Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_" he
sang. An officer of Rodes came up. "General Rodes reports, sir, that he
has taken a line of their entrenchments. He's less than a mile from
Chancellorsville."

"Good! Tell him A. P. Hill will support. As you go, tell the troops that
I wish them to get into line and preserve their order."

The officer went. An aide of Colston's appeared, breathless from a
struggle through the thickets. "From General Colston, sir. He's
immediately behind General Rodes. There was a wide abattis. The troops
are reforming beyond it. We see no Federals between us and
Chancellorsville."

"Good! Tell General Colston to use expedition and get his men into line.
Those guns are opening without orders!"

Three grey cannon, planted within bowshot of the Chancellor House,
opened, indeed, and with vigour,--opened against twenty-two guns in
epaulements on the Chancellorsville ridge. The twenty-two answered in a
roar of sound, overtowering the cannonade to the east of McLaws and
Anderson. The Wilderness resounded; smoke began to rise like the smoke
of strange sacrifices; the mood of the place changed to frenzy. She
swung herself, she chanted.

"Grey or blue,
I care not, I!
Blue and grey
Are here to die!
This human brood
Is stained with blood.
The armed man dies,
See where he lies
In my arms asleep!
On my breast asleep!
The babe of Time,
A nestling fallen.
The nest a ruin,