--no! singing--

"We're the Stonewall.
Zoom! Zoom!
We're the openers of the ball.
Zoom! Zoom!

"Fix bayonets! Charge!
Rip! Rip!
N. P. Banks for our targe.
Zip! Zip!

"We wrote it on the way.
Zoom! Zoom!
Hope you like our little lay.
Zoom! Zoom!
For we didn't go to Richmond and we're coming home to stay!"

Four days later, on Sitlington's Hill, on the Bull Pasture Mountain,
thirty miles to the west of Staunton, a man sat at nightfall in the
light of a great camp-fire and wrote a dispatch to his Government. There
waited for it a swift rider--watching the stars while the general wrote,
or the surgeons' lanterns, like fireflies, wandering up and down the
long green slopes where the litter bearers lifted the wounded, friend
and foe.

The man seated on the log wrote with slow precision a long dispatch,
covering several pages of paper. Then he read it over, and then he
looked for a minute or two at the flitting lanterns, and then he slowly
tore the dispatch in two, and fed the fire with the pieces. The courier,
watching him write a much shorter message, half put forth his hand to
take it, for his horse whinnied upon the road far below, and the way to
Staunton was long and dark. However, Jackson's eyes again dwelt on the
grey slopes before him and on the Alleghenies, visited by stars, and
then, as slowly as before, he tore this dispatch also across and across
and dropped the pieces on the brands. When they were burned he wrote a
single line, signed and folded it, and gave it to the courier. The
latter, in the first pink light, in the midst of a jubilant Staunton,
read it to the excited operator in the little telegraph station.

"God blessed our arms with victory at McDowell yesterday.

"T. J. JACKSON
"_Major-General._"

CHAPTER XIX

THE FLOWERING WOOD

"Thank you, ma'am," said Allan. "I reckon just so long as there are such
women in the Valley there'll be worth-while men there, too! You've all
surely done your share."

"Now, you've got the pot of apple butter, and the bucket with the
honeycomb, and the piece of bacon and th