before they rallied and pushed them back with frightful
loss on both sides.

John's Captain fell, dangerously wounded, and lay fifty feet beyond
their battle line. The dry leaves in the woods had taken fire from a
shell and the blaze was nearing the wounded men. The Westerner coolly
leaped from his position behind a tree, walked out in a hail of lead,
picked up his wounded Commander, and carried him safely to the rear. He
had just stepped back to take his stand in line by John's side when a
flying piece of shrapnel tore a hole in his side. He dropped to his
knees, sank lower to his elbow, turned his blue eyes to the darkening
sky and slowly muttered as if to himself:

"Poor--little--wife--and--babies!"

The night was drawing her merciful veil over the scene at last. Jackson
having crushed and mangled Hooker's right wing and rolled it back in red
defeat over five miles in two hours, was slowly feeling his way on his
last reconnaissance for the day to make his plans for the next. Through
a fatal misunderstanding he was fired on by his own men and borne from
the field fatally wounded.

A shiver of horror thrilled the Southerners when the news of Jackson's
fall was whispered through the darkness.

At midnight Sickles led his division back into the dense woods and for
three terrible hours the men on both sides fought as demons in the
shadows. The long lines of blazing muskets in the darkness looked like
the onward rush of a forest fire. At times two solid walls of flame
seemed to leap through the tree tops into the starlit heavens. A small
portion of the captured ground was recovered at a frightful loss--and no
man knows to this day how many gallant men in blue were shot down by
their own comrades in the darkness and confusion of that mad assault.

Hooker sent a desperate call to Sedgwick to hurry to his relief by
carrying out his plan of sweeping Marye's Heights and falling on Lee's
rear.

At dawn Stuart in command of Jackson's corps led the new charge on
Hooker's lines, his grey veterans shouting:

"Remember Jackson!"

Through the long hours of the terrible third day of May the fierce
combat of giants raged. During the morning Hooker's headquarters were
reached by the Confederate artillery and the old Chancellor House,
filled with the wounded, was knocked to pieces and set on fire. The
women and children and slaves of the Chancellor family were shivering in
its cellar while the shells were hurling its bricks and