pent his last evening with his old friends. "He was in fine health
and fine spirits," wrote the minister's wife to Mrs. Jackson. "The
children begged to be permitted to sit up to see "General Jackson,"
and he really seemed overjoyed to see them, played with them and
fondled them, and they were equally pleased. I have no doubt it was a
great recreation to him. He seemed to be living over last winter
again, and talked a great deal about the hope of getting back to
spend this winter with us, in the old room, which I told him I was
keeping for you and him. He certainly has had adulation enough to
spoil him, but it seems not to affect or harm him at all. He is the
same humble, dependent Christian, desiring to give God all the glory,
looking to Him alone for a blessing, and not thinking of himself."

So it was with no presage that this was the last time he would look
upon the scenes he loved that Jackson moved southward by the Valley
turnpike. Past Kernstown his columns swept, past Middletown and
Strasburg, and all the well-remembered fields of former triumphs;
until the peaks of the Massanuttons threw their shadows across the
highway, and the mighty bulk of the noble mountains, draped in the
gold and crimson of the autumn, once more re-echoed to the tramp of
his swift-footed veterans. Turning east at New Market, he struck
upwards by the familiar road; and then, descending the narrow pass,
he forded the Shenandoah, and crossing the Luray valley vanished in
the forests of the Blue Ridge. Through the dark pines of Fisher's Gap
he led his soldiers down to the Virginia plains, and the rivers and
the mountains knew him no more until their dead returned to them.

On the 26th the Second Army Corps was at Madison Court House.

November 27.

The next day it was concentrated at Orange Court House,
six-and-thirty miles from Fredericksburg. In eight days, two being
given to rest, the troops had marched one hundred and twenty miles,
and with scarce a straggler, for the stern measures which had been
taken to put discipline on a firmer basis, and to make the regimental
officers do their duty, had already produced a salutary effect.

On Jackson's arrival at Orange Court House he found the situation
unchanged. Burnside, notwithstanding that heavy snow-storms and sharp
frosts betokened the approach of winter, the season of impassable
roads and swollen rivers, was still encamped near Falmouth. The
difficulty of establishing a new base of s