inkling the village passed from her Sunday atmosphere to one of a
highly work-a-day Monday. The blue cavalry began to harry the place. The
townspeople hurried home, trumpets blared, shots rang out, oaths, shouts
of warning! Men in grey belonging with the wagon train ran headlong
toward their posts, others made for headquarters where the flag was and
Stonewall Jackson. A number, headed off, were captured at once. Others,
indoors when the alarm arose, were hidden by the women. Three staff
officers had walked, after leaving Jackson's council, toward a house
holding pretty daughters whom they meant to take to church. When the
clangour broke out they had their first stupefied moment, after which
they turned and ran with all their might toward headquarters. There was
fighting up and down the street. Half a dozen huzzaing and sabring
troopers saw the three and shouted to others nearer yet. "Officers! Cut
them off, you there!" The three were taken. A captain, astride of a
great reeking horse, towered above them. "Staff? You're staff? Is
Jackson in the town?--and where? Quick now! Eh--what!"

"That's a lovely horse. Looks exactly, I imagine, like Rozinante--"

"On the whole I should say that McClellan might be finding Richmond like
those mirages travellers tell about. The nearer he gets to it the
further it is away."

"It has occurred to me that if after the evacuation of Corinth
Beauregard should come back to Virginia--"

The captain in blue, hot and breathless, bewildered by the very success
of the dash into town, kept saying, "Where is Jackson? What? Quick
there, you! Where--" Behind him a corporal spoke out cavalierly. "They
aren't going to tell you, sir. There's a large house down there that's
got something like a flag before it--I think, too, that we ought to go
take the bridge."

The streams of blue troopers flowed toward the principal street and
united there. Some one saw the flag more plainly. "That's a
headquarters!--What if Jackson were there? Good Lord! what if we took
Jackson?" A bugler blew a vehement rally. "_All of you, come on! All of
you, come on!_" The stream increased in volume, began to move, a compact
body, down the street. "There are horses before that door! Look at that
nag! That's Jackson's horse!--No."--"Yes! Saw it at Kernstown! Forward!"

Stonewall Jackson came out of the house with the flag before it. Behind
him were those of his staff who had not left headquarters when the
invasion occurred, w