's exploded, scorching the gunners, a lieutenant was
wounded in the thigh, but the batteries suffered less than did the
infantry in the background. Here, more than one exploding horror wrought
destruction. Immediately in rear of the guns were posted the 4th, the
27th, and the 65th. To the right hand was the 5th, to the left the 2d
and the 33d. In all the men lay down in ranks, just sheltered by the
final fringe of pines. The younger officers stood up, or, stepping into
the clearing, seated themselves not without ostentation upon pine
stumps, to the laudable end that the enemy should know where to find
them. Jackson rode back and forth behind the guns.

The thundering voices grew louder, shaking the hills. The First Brigade
could not see the infantry, swept now from the Mathews Hill and engaged
about the turnpike and the stream. By stretching necks it saw a roof of
smoke, dun-coloured, hiding pandemonium. Beneath that deeper thunder of
the guns, the crackling, unintermittent sound of musketry affected the
ear like the stridulation of giant insects. The men awaiting their turn
beneath the pines, breathing quick, watching the shells, moved their
heads slightly to and fro. In front, outdrawn upon a little ridge, stood
the guns and boomed defiance. Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria,
and New Orleans did well this day. The guns themselves were something
ancient, growing obsolete; but those striplings about them, beardless,
powder-grimed, bare of arm and chest, silent and swift and steady of eye
and hand, sponging, ramming, priming, aiming, firing, showed in the van
of Time a brood of Mars, a band of whom foe-quelling Hector might say
"They will do well."

General T. J. Jackson on Little Sorrel went up and down between the
speaking guns and the waiting infantry. The men, from their couch upon
the needles, watched him. Before their eyes war was transfiguring him,
and his soldiers called him "Old Jack" and made no reservation. The
awkward figure took on a stalwart grace, the old uniform, the boots, the
cap, grew classically right. The inner came outward, the atmosphere
altered, and the man was seen as he rode in the plane above. A shell
from Ricketts came screaming, struck and cut down a young pine. In
falling, the tree caught and hurt a man or two. Another terror followed
and exploded overhead, a fragment inflicting upon a bugler of the 65th
a ghastly wound. "Steady, men, steady!--all's well," said Old Jack. He
threw up