."

Ashby came at the moment with a body of horse out of the wood to the
east. He checked the black stallion, saluted and made his report. "I
have burned the Conrad Store, White House and Columbia bridges, sir. If
Shields wishes to cross he must swim the Shenandoah. It is much swollen.
I have left Massanutton Gap strongly guarded."

"Good! good! General Winder, you will follow General Taylor. Tell the
men that I wish them to press on. General Ashby, the march is now to
proceed undisturbed."

The second of June burned onward to its close, through heat, dust,
thirst, and relentlessly rapid marching. In the late afternoon occurred
a monstrous piling up of thunder clouds, a whistling of wind, and a
great downpour of rain. It beat down the wheat and pattered like elfin
bullets on the forest leaves. Through this fusillade the army came down
to the west fork of the Shenandoah. Pioneers laid a bridge of wagons,
and, brigade by brigade, the army crossed. High on the bank in the loud
wind and dashing rain, Jackson on Little Sorrel watched the transit. By
dusk all were over and the bridge was taken up.

On the further shore Ashby now kept guard between Fremont and the host
in grey. As for Shields, he was on the far side of the Massanuttons,
before him a bridgeless, swollen torrent and a guarded mountain pass.
Before becoming dangerous he must move south and round the Massanuttons.
Far from achieving junction, space had widened between Shields and
Fremont. The Army of the Valley had run the gauntlet, and in doing so
had pushed the walls apart. The men, climbing from the Shenandoah,
saluting their general, above them there in the wind and the rain,
thought the voice with which he answered them unusually gentle. He
almost always spoke to his troops gently, but to-night there was almost
a fatherly tone. And though he jerked his hand into the air, it was
meditatively done, a quiet salute to some observant commander up there.

Later, in the deep darkness, the army bivouacked near New Market.
Headquarters was established in an old mill. Here a dripping courier
unwrapped from a bit of cloth several leaves of the whitey-brown
telegraph paper of the Confederacy and gave them into the general's
hand.

Next morning, at roll call, each colonel spoke to his regiment. "Men!
There has been a great battle before Richmond--at a place called Seven
Pines. Day before yesterday General Johnston attacked General McClellan.
The battle raged all da