later in the Shenandoah Valley.

Longstreet's corps, with two regiments of cavalry, had attacked
Sheridan's divisions, and the struggle was hot and fierce. The day was
warm, and a brilliant sun poured down into the green cornland and
woodland wealth of the valley as the Southern divisions came up to the
attack in beautiful precision, and hurled themselves with tremendous
_elan_ on the right front of the Federals, who, covered by their
hastily thrown-up breastworks, opened a deadly fire that raked the whole
Confederate line as they advanced. Men fell by the score under the
murderous mitraille, but the ranks closed up shoulder to shoulder,
without pause or wavering, only maddened by the furious storm of shot,
as the engagement became general and the white rolling clouds of smoke
poured down the valley, and hid conflict and combatants from sight, the
thunder of the musketry pealing from height to height; while in many
places men were fighting literally face to face and hand to hand in a
death-struggle--rare in these days, when the duello of artillery and the
rivalry of breech-loaders begins, decides, and ends most battles.

On Longstreet's left, two squadrons of Virginian Cavalry were drawn up,
waiting the order to advance, and passionately impatient of delay as
regiment after regiment were sent up to the attack and were lost in the
whirling cloud of dust and smoke, and they were kept motionless, in
reserve. At their head was Bertie Winton, unconscious that, on a hill to
the right, with a group of Federal commanders, his father was looking
down on that struggle in the Shenandoah. Bertie was little altered, save
that on his face there was a sterner look, and in his eyes a keener and
less listless glance; but the old languid grace, the old lazy
gentleness, were there still. They were part of his nature, and nothing
could kill them in him. In the five years that had gone by, none whom he
had known in Europe had ever heard a word of him or from him; he had cut
away all the moorings that bound him to his old life, and had sought to
build up his ruined fortunes, like the penniless soldier that he was, by
his sword alone. So far he had succeeded: he had made his name famous
throughout the States as a bold and unerring cavalry leader, and had won
the personal friendship and esteem of the Chiefs of the Southern
Confederacy. The five years had been filled with incessant adventures,
with ever present peril, with the din of falling c