ad been preparing for the movement for some time; he
had foreseen that the position must be evacuated as soon as the enemy
began to advance upon either of his flanks, and a considerable portion
of his baggage and military stores had some time previously been sent
into the interior of Virginia. The troops, formed up on the high grounds
south of the river, looked in silence at the dense volumes of smoke
rising. This was the reality of war. Hitherto their military work had
been no more than that to which many of them were accustomed when called
out with the militia of their State; but the scene of destruction on
which they now gazed brought home to them that the struggle was a
serious one--that it was war in its stern reality which had now begun.

The troops at once set off on their march, and at night bivouacked in
the woods around Charleston. The next day they pushed across the country
and took up a position covering Winchester; and then the enemy, finding
that Johnston's army was in front of them, ready to dispute their
advance, recrossed the river, and Johnston concentrated his force round
Winchester.

Vincent joined his corps on the same afternoon that the infantry marched
out from Harper's Ferry, the general sending him forward with dispatches
as soon as the troops had got into motion.

"You will find Colonel Stuart in front of the enemy; but more than that
I cannot tell you."

This was quite enough for Vincent, who found the cavalry scouting close
to Patterson's force, prepared to attack the enemy's cavalry, should it
advance to reconnoiter the country, and to blow up bridges across
streams, fell trees, and take every possible measure to delay the
advance of Patterson's army, in its attempt to push on toward Winchester
before the arrival of General Johnston's force upon the scene.

"I am glad to see you back, Wingfield," Major Ashley said, as he rode
up. "The colonel tells me that in the dispatch he got last night from
Johnston the general said that Stuart's information reached him in a
remarkably short time, having been carried with great speed by the
orderly in charge of the duty. We have scarcely been out of our saddles
since you left. However, I think we have been of use, for we have been
busy all round the enemy since we arrived here in the afternoon, and I
fancy he must think us a good deal stronger than we are. At any rate, he
has not pushed his cavalry forward at all; and, as you say Johnston will
be up