and canister sweep them down. The officer tumbles from his horse,
and the horse staggers to the earth. There are sudden gaps in the ranks.
They stop advancing. Officers run here and there. Another merciless
storm,--another,--another. Eighteen flashes a minute from those six
pieces! Like grass before the mower the Rebel line is cut down. The men
flee to the woods, utterly routed.

The attempt to cut off the retreat signally failed. It was the last
attempt of the Rebels to follow up their mysterious victory. The
rear-guard remained in Centreville till morning recovering five cannon
which had been abandoned at Cub Run, which the Rebels had not secured,
and then retired to Arlington.

So the battle was won and lost. So the hopes of the Union soldiers
changed to sudden, unaccountable fear, and so the fear of the Rebels
became unbounded exultation.

The sun had gone down behind the Blue Mountains, and the battle-clouds
hung thick and heavy along the winding stream where the conflict had
raged. It was a sad night to us who had gone out with such high hopes,
who had seen the victory so nearly won and so suddenly lost. Many of our
wounded were lying where they had fallen. It was a terrible night to
them. Their enemies, some of them, were hard-hearted and cruel. They
fired into the hospitals upon helpless men. They refused them water to
quench their burning thirst. They taunted them in their hour of triumph,
and heaped upon them bitterest curses. They were wild with the delirium
of success, and treated their prisoners with savage barbarity. Any one
who showed kindness to the prisoners or wounded was looked upon with
suspicion. Says an English officer in the Rebel service:--[4]

[Footnote 4: Estvan.]

"I made it my duty to seek out and attend upon the wounded,
and the more so when I found that the work of alleviating
their sufferings was performed with evident reluctance and
want of zeal by many of those whose duty it was to do it. I
looked upon the poor fellows only as suffering
fellow-mortals, brothers in need of help, and made no
distinction between friend and foe; nay, I must own that I
was prompted to give the preference to the latter, for the
reason that some of our men met with attention from their
relations and friends, who had flocked to the field in
numbers to see them. But in doing so I had to encounter
opposition, and was even pointed at by some with muttered