ctor. God's shield is over us.--Captain Wilbourne--"

"I brought the signal party in from Peaked Mountain last night, sir. A
Yankee cavalry company threatened to cut us off. Had we stayed we should
have been captured. I trust, sir, that I acted rightly?"

"You acted rightly. You saw nothing of General Shields?"

"Nothing, sir. It is true that the woods for miles are extremely thick.
It would perhaps be possible for a small force to move unseen. But we
made out nothing."

Jackson rose and drew closer the sabre and the Bible. "That is all,
gentlemen. After religious services you will return to your respective
duties."

The sun was now above the mountain tops, the mist beginning to lift. It
lay heavily, however, over the deep woods and the bottom lands of the
South Fork, through which ran the Luray road, and on the South Fork
itself.--Clatter, clatter! Shots and cries! Shouting the alarm as they
came, splashing through the ford, stopping on the hither bank for one
scattering volley back into the woolly veil, came Confederate infantry
pickets and vedettes. "Yankee cavalry! Look out! Look out! Yankees!" In
the mist the foremost man ran against the detail from the 65th. Coffin
seized him. "Where? where?" The other gasped. "Coming! Drove us in!
Whole lot of them! Got two guns. All of Shields, I reckon, right
behind!" He broke away, tearing with his fellows into the village.

Sergeant Coffin and his men stared into the mist. They heard a great
splashing, a jingling and shouting, and in another instant were aware of
something looming like a herd of elephants. From the village behind them
burst the braying of their own bugles--headquarters summoning, baggage
train on the Staunton road summoning. The sound was shrill, insistent.
The shapes in the mist grew larger. There came a flash of rifles, pale
yellow through the drift as of lawn. Zzzzzz! Zzzzzz! sang the balls. The
twenty men of the 65th proceeded to save themselves. Some of them tore
down a side street, straight before the looming onrush. Others leaped
fences and brushed through gardens, rich and dank. Others found house
doors suddenly and quietly opening before them, houses with capacious
dark garrets and cellars. All the dim horde, more and more of it, came
splashing through the ford. A brazen rumbling arose, announcing guns.
The foremost of the horde, blurred of outline, preternaturally large,
huzzaing and firing, charged into the streets of Port Republic.

In a tw