ragment of shell struck and stunned Fighting
Joe Hooker. He lay senseless for hours and Couch took command. The grey
musketry, the blue musketry, rolled, rolled! The Wilderness was on fire.
In places it was like a prairie. The flames licked their way through the
scrub; the wounded perished. Ammunition began to fail; Stuart ordered
the ground to be held with the bayonet. There was a great attack against
his left. His three lines came into one and repulsed it. His right and
Anderson's left now touched. The Army of Northern Virginia was again a
unit.

Stuart swung above his head the hat with the black feather. His
beautiful horse danced along the grey lines, the lines that were very
grimly determined, the lines that knew now that Stonewall Jackson was
badly wounded. They meant, the grey lines, to make this day and this
Wilderness remembered. "_Forward. Charge!_" cried Jeb Stuart. "Remember
Jackson!" He swung his plumed hat. _Yaaaii! Yaaaaaaaiihhh! Yaaaaaii!
Yaaaiiiihhh!_ yelled the grey lines, and charged. Stuart went at their
head, and as he went he raised in song his golden, ringing voice. "_Old
Joe Hooker, won't you come out of the Wilderness?_"

By ten o'clock the Chancellor ridge was taken, the blue guns silenced,
Hooker beaten back toward the Rappahannock. The Wilderness, after all,
was Virginian. She broke into a war song of triumph. Her flowers
bloomed, her birds sang, and then came Lee to the front. Oh, the Army of
Northern Virginia cheered him! "Men, men!" he said, "you have done well,
you have done well! Where is General Jackson?"

He was told. Presently he wrote a note and sent it to the field hospital
near Dowdall's Tavern. "_General:--I cannot express my regret. Could I
have directed events I should have chosen for the good of the country to
be disabled in your stead. I congratulate you upon the victory, which is
due to your skill and energy. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
R. E. Lee._"

An aide read it to Stonewall Jackson where he lay, very quiet, in the
deeps of the Wilderness. For a minute he did not speak, then he said,
"General Lee is very kind, but he should give the praise to God."

For four days yet they fought, in the Wilderness, at Salem church, at
the Fords of the Rappahannock, again at Fredericksburg. Then they
rested, the Army of the Potomac back on the northern side of the
Rappahannock, the Army of Northern Virginia holding the southern shore
and the road to Richmond--Richmond no