at
hilltop, and the lines of blue had begun to climb. The disorder
increased; panic might come like the wind in the grass. Bee reached the
choked ravine, pulled up his great roan. He was a man tall and large,
and as he rose in his stirrups and held his sword aloft, standing
against the sky, upon the rim of the ravine, he looked colossal, a
bronze designed to point the way. He cried aloud, "Look! Yonder is
Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!" As he
spoke a shell struck him. He fell, mortally wounded.

The eyes of the men in the cleft below had followed the pointed sword.
The hilltop was above them, and along the summit, just in advance of a
pine wood, ran a stone wall, grey, irregular, touched here by sunlight,
there by shadow, and shrouded in part by the battle smoke. Some one had
planted upon it a flag. For a full moment the illusion held, then the
wall moved. A captain of the 4th Alabama, hoarse with shouting, found
voice once more. "God! We aren't beaten! Talk of Birnam wood! The stone
wall's coming!"

Up and out of the ravine, widening like an opening fan, pressed the
disordered troops. The plateau was covered by chaos come again.
Officers, raging, shouted orders, ran to and fro, gesticulated with
their swords. A short line was formed, another; they dissolved before a
third could be added. All voices were raised; there was a tumult of
cries, commands, protestations, adjurations, and refusals. Over all
screamed the shells, settled the smoke. Franklin, Willcox, Sherman, and
Porter, pressing the Federal advantage, were now across the turnpike.
Beneath their feet was the rising ground--a moment more, and they would
leap victorious up the ragged slope. The moment was delayed. With a
rending sound as of a giant web torn asunder, the legions of Hampton and
Cary, posted near the house of the free negro Robinson, came into action
and held in check the four brigades.

High upon the plateau, near Jackson's line, above the wild confusion of
the retreating troops, appeared in the blaze of the midday sun, hatless,
on steeds reeking from the four miles' gallop from that centre where the
battle did not join to this left where it did, the generals Johnston and
Beauregard. Out of the red lightning, the thunder, the dust and the
smoke, above the frenzied shouting and the crying of the wounded, their
presence was electrically known. A cheer rushed from the First Brigade;
at the guns Rockbridge, Staunton,