son also was watching from his convenient hill, and his
small staff, mostly of very young men, clustered close behind him.
Jackson no longer used his glasses, as Burnside was doing. Meade and
his Pennsylvanians were coming close to him now. The great Union
batteries on Stafford Heights must soon cease firing or their shells
and shot would be crashing into the blue ranks.

"It cannot be much longer," said Harry.

"No, not much longer," said Dalton. "We'll unmask mighty soon. How far
away would you say they are now, Harry?"

"About a thousand yards."

"Over a half mile. Then I'll say that when they come within a half mile
Old Jack will give the word to the artillery to loosen up."

Harry and George, in their intense absorption, had forgotten about the
other parts of the line. In their minds, for the present at least,
Jackson was fighting the battle alone. Longstreet was forgotten,
and even Lee, for a space, remained unremembered. They were staring at
the brigades which were coming on so gallantly, when the jaws of death
were already opened so wide to receive them.

"They're at the half mile," said Dalton, who had a wonderful eye for
distance, "and still Old Jack does not give the word."

"The closer the better," said Harry. Glancing up and down the lines he
saw the men bending over their guns and the riflemen in line after line
rising slowly to their feet and looking to their arms. In spite of
himself, in spite of all the hard usage of war through which he had been,
Harry shuddered. He did not hate any of those men out there who were
coming toward them so boldly; no, there was not in all those brigades,
nor in all the Union army, nor in all the North a single person whom he
wished to hurt. Yet he knew that he would soon fight against them with
all the weapons and all the power he could gather.

"Eight hundred yards," said Dalton.

"Fire!" was the word that ran like an electric blaze along the
whole Southern front; and Jackson's fifty cannon, suddenly pushing
forward from the forest, poured a storm of steel upon the devoted
Pennsylvanians. Harry felt the earth rocking beneath him, and his ears
were stunned by the roaring and crashing of the cannon all about him.

The Union officers on the porches of the colonial mansion across the
river saw that terrible blaze leap from the Confederate line, and their
hearts sank within them like lead. Alarmed as they had been before,
they were in consternation now