ly short space of time they were in Washington, insisting
that Longstreet had gone to the Valley, and that Beauregard was up from
the South--they had an impression that in that glimpse of a big review
they had seen him! Certainly they had seen somebody who looked as though
his name ought to be Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard!

In the mean time Hood, Lawton, and Whiting actually arrived in the
Valley. They came into Staunton, in good order, veteran troops, ready
to march against Shields or Fremont or Banks or Sigel, to keep the
Valley or to proceed against Washington, quite as Stonewall Jackson
should desire! Seven thousand troops, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina,
and Virginia, lean, bronzed, growing ragged, tall men, with eyes set
well apart, good marchers, good fighters, good lovers, and good
haters.--There suddenly appeared before them on the pike at Staunton
Stonewall Jackson, ridden through the night from Mt. Meridian.

The three brigades paraded. Jackson rode up and down the line. His fame
had mounted high. To do with a few men and at a little cost what, by all
the rules of war, should have involved strong armies and much
bloodshed--that took a generalship for which the world was beginning to
give him credit. With Cross Keys and Port Republic began that sustained
enthusiasm which accompanied him to the end. Now, on the march and on
the battlefield, when he passed his men cheered him wildly, and
throughout the South the eyes of men and women kindled at his name. At
Staunton the reinforcing troops, the greater number of whom saw him for
the first time, shouted for him and woke the echoes. Grave and
unsmiling, he lifted the forage cap, touched Little Sorrel with the spur
and went on by. It is not to be doubted that he was ambitious, and it
lies not in ambitious man, no, nor in man of any type, to feel no joy in
such a cry of recognition! If he felt it, however, he did not evince it.
He only jerked his hand into the air and went by.

Two hours later he rode back to Mt. Meridian. The three brigades under
orders to follow, stayed only to cook a day's rations and to repack
their wagons. Their certainty was absolute. "We will join the Army of
the Valley _wherever it may be_. Then we will march against Shields or
Fremont, or maybe against Banks or Sigel."

Breaking camp in the afternoon, they moved down the pike, through a
country marvellous to the Georgians and Texans. Sunset came, and still
they marched; dark, and sti