will not help them," the Virginian replied.

The Southern battle front, which for a few minutes had lost cohesion,
now swelled higher than ever. Led by Jackson in person, nearly all the
officers in front sword in hand, the whole division with a mighty shout
charged. Harry saw the Invincibles in the first line, the two colonels,
one on either flank, waving their swords and their faces young again
with the battle fire. But it was only a glimpse. Then they were lost
from his sight in the fire and smoke.

There could be no sufficient defense against the charge of such a foe,
numerous, prepared and wild with victory. They swept over the
breastwork, they seized the cannon, they took prisoners, and before them
they swept the right wing of the Union army in irreparable rout and
confusion. Harry had not seen its like in the whole war, nor was
he destined to see it again. An entire corps had been annihilated.
The Wilderness was filled with the fragments of regiments seeking to
join the main force with Hooker at Chancellorsville.

Harry thought Jackson would stop. They were now in the deep woods.
The sun was almost gone. The shadows from the east had crept over the
whole sky, and it was already dark among the dense thickets of the
Wilderness. An hour had passed since the first rush, and few generals
would have had the daring to push on in the forest, dark already and
rapidly growing darker. But Jackson was one of the few. He continued
to urge on his men, and he sent his staff officers galloping back and
forth to help in the task. There was a road in the very rear of Hooker.
He intended to seize it, and he was resolved before the night closed
down utterly to plant himself so firmly against the very center of the
Union army that Hooker's complete defeat in the morning would be sure.

The bugles sang the charge again all along the Southern line, and in
the dying twilight, lit by the flame of cannon and rifles, they swept
forward, driving all resistance before them.

It was one of the most appalling moments in the history of a nation
which has had to win its way with immense toil and through many dangers.
Hooker, brave, not lacking in ability, but far from being a match for
the extraordinary combination that faced him, two men of genius working
in perfect harmony, had been sitting with two of his staff officers
on the portico of the Chancellor House. He was serene and confident.
He knew the courage of his soldiers an