Three thousand of the troops were fresh;
three thousand had been long and heavily engaged, and driven from their
first position.

Rockbridge and New Orleans and their fellows worked like grey automata
about their belching guns. They made a dead line for the advance to
cross. Ricketts and Griffin answered with their howling shells--shells
that burst above the First Brigade. One stopped short of the men in
battle. It entered the Henry House, burst, and gave five wounds to the
woman cowering in her bed. Now she lay there, dying, above the armies,
and the flower-beds outside were trampled, and the boughs of the locust
trees strewn upon the earth.

Hunter and Heintzleman mounted the ridge of the hill. With an immense
volley of musketry the battle joined upon the plateau that was but five
hundred yards across. The Fire Zouaves, all red, advanced like a flame
against the 4th Alabama, crouched behind scrub oak to the left of the
field. The 4th Alabama fired, loaded, fired again. The zouaves broke,
fleeing in disorder toward a piece of woods. Out from the shadow of the
trees came Jeb Stuart with two hundred cavalrymen. The smoke was very
thick; it was not with ease that one told friend from foe. In the
instant of encounter the _beau sabreur_ thought that he spoke to
Confederates. He made his horse to bound, he rose in his stirrups, he
waved his plumed hat, he shouted aloud in his rich and happy voice,
"Don't run, boys! We are here!" To his disappointment the magic fell
short. The "boys" ran all the faster. Behind him, a trooper lifted his
voice. "They're not ours! They're Yankees! Charge them, sir, charge!"
Stuart charged.

Along the crest of the Henry Hill the kneeling ranks of the First
Brigade fired and loaded and fired again. Men and horses fell around the
guns of Ricketts and Griffin, but the guns were not silenced. Rockbridge
and Loudoun and their fellows answered with their Virginia Military
Institute six-pounders, with their howitzers, with their one or two
Napoleons, but Ricketts and Griffin held fast. The great shells came
hurtling, death screaming its message and sweeping the pine wood. The
stone wall suffered; here and there the units dropped from place.
Jackson, holding up his wounded hand, came to the artillery. "Get these
guns out of my way. I am going to give them the bayonet." The bugler put
the bugle to his lips. The guns limbered up, moving out by the right
flank and taking position elsewhere upon the plat