ess Richmond is fallen._

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from her high estate,
And weltering in her blood.

Elsewhere brave, true, and simple men attended to their duties, wrote
their letters home, and, going their rounds or walking their beats,
looked upward to the silver stars. They looked at the stars in the west,
over the Alleghenies where Fremont, where Milroy and Schenck should be;
and at those in the south, over the long leagues of the great Valley,
over Harrisonburg, somewhere the other side of which Stonewall Jackson
must be; and at those in the east, over the Massanuttons, with the Blue
Ridge beyond, and Front Royal in between, where Colonel Kenly was; and
at the bright stars in the North, over home, over Connecticut and
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, over Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maine.

They who watched the stars from Strasburg dwelt least of all, perhaps,
upon the stars in the east. Yet under those lay that night, ten miles
from Front Royal, Stonewall Jackson and seventeen thousand men.

CHAPTER XX

FRONT ROYAL

In the hot, bright morning, Cleave, commanding four companies of the
65th thrown out as skirmishers, entered the band of forest lying between
the Blue Ridge and Front Royal. The day was hot, the odour of the pines
strong and heady; high in heaven, in a still and intense blue, the
buzzards were slowly sailing. A long, thin line of picked men, keen,
watchful, the reserve a hundred yards or two behind, the skirmishers
moved forward over a rough cart track and over the opposing banks. Each
man stepped lightly as a cat, each held his gun in the fashion most
convenient to himself, each meant to do good hunting. Ahead was a
thicker belt of trees, and beyond that a gleam of sky, a promise of a
clearing. Suddenly, out of this blue space, rose the neigh of a horse.

The skirmishers halted beneath the trees. The men waited, bent forward,
holding breath, recognizing the pause on the rim of action, the moment
before the moment. The clearing appeared to be several hundred yards
away. Back from it, upon the idle air, floated loud and careless
talking, then laughter. Allan Gold came out of the thicker wood, moved,
a tawny shadow, across the moss and reported to Cleave. "Two companies,
sir--infantry--scattered along a little branch. Arms stacked."

The line entered the wood, the laughter and talking before it growing
louder. Each grey marksman twitch