Pope's
advance upon Richmond. The troops were too much exhausted to follow up
their victory, but Jackson urged them to press forward. They moved a
mile and a half in advance, and then found themselves so strongly
opposed that Jackson, believing that the enemy must have received
re-enforcements, halted his men. Colonel Jones was sent forward to
reconnoiter, and discovered that a large force had joined the enemy.

For two days Jackson remained on the field he had won; his troops had
been busy in burying the dead, in collecting the wounded and sending
them to the rear, and in gathering the arms thrown away by the enemy in
their flight. Being assured that the enemy were now too strong to be
attacked by the force under his command, Jackson fell back to Orange
Courthouse. There was now a few days' delay, while masses of troops were
on both sides moving toward the new field of action. McClellan marched
his troops across the James Peninsula from Harrison's Landing to
Yorktown, and there the greater portion were embarked in transports and
taken up the Rappahannock to Aquia Creek, landed there, and marched to
Fredericksburg.

Lee, instead of attacking McClellan on his march across the peninsula,
determined to take his army north at once to join Jackson and attack
Pope before he was joined by McClellan's army. But Pope, although
already largely re-enforced, retired hastily and took up a new position
so strongly fortified that he could not be attacked. General Stuart had
come up with Lee, and was in command of all the cavalry.

"We shall see some work now," was the remark round the fires of the 7th
Virginia Cavalry. Hitherto, although they had been several times engaged
with the Federals, they had been forced to remain for the most part
inactive owing to the vast superiority in force of the enemy's cavalry;
but now that Stuart had come up they felt certain that, whatever the
disparity of numbers, there would soon be some dashing work to be done.

Except when upon actual duty the strict lines of military discipline
were much relaxed among the cavalry, the troopers being almost all the
sons of farmers and planters and of equal social rank with their
officers, many of whom were their personal friends or relatives. Several
of Vincent's schoolfellows were in the ranks, two or three of them were
fellow-officers, and these often gathered together round a camp fire and
chatted over old schooldays and mutual friends.

Many of these ha