t, a great cloud as of many marching men. It moved
rapidly. It approached at a double quick, apparently it had several guns
at trail. Early had not yet come up from Union Mills; was it Early?
Could it be--_could it be from Manassas_? _Could it be the missing
brigade?_ Beauregard, flashing across the plateau like a meteor, lifted
himself in his stirrups, raised with a shaking hand his field-glasses to
his eyes. Stonewall Jackson held higher his wounded hand, wrapped in a
handkerchief no longer white. "It ain't for the pain,--he's praying,"
thought the orderly by his side. Over on the left, guarding that flank,
Jeb Stuart, mounted on a hillock, likewise addressed the heavens. "Good
Lord, I hope it's Elzey! Oh, good Lord, let it be Elzey!" The 49th
Virginia was strung behind a rail fence, firing from between the grey
bars. "Extra Billy," whose horse had been shot an hour before, suddenly
appeared in an angle erect upon the topmost rails. He gazed, then turned
and harangued. "Didn't I tell you, boys? Didn't I say that the old
Manassas Gap ain't half so black as she's painted? The president of that
road is my friend, gentlemen, and a better man never mixed a julep! The
old Manassas Gap's got them through! It's a road to be patronized,
gentlemen! The old Manassas Gap--"

A hand plucked at his boot. "For the Lord's sake, governor, come down
from there, or you'll be travelling on the Angels' Express!"

The dust rose higher; there came out of it a sound, a low, hoarse din.
Maine and Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, New York and Rhode
Island, saw and heard. There was a waver as of grain beneath wind over
the field, then the grain stood stiff against the wind, and all the
muskets flamed again.

The lost brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah, seventeen hundred
infantry and Beckham's Battery swept by the Lewis House, received
instructions from Johnston in person, and advanced against the enemy's
right flank. Kirby Smith led them. Heated, exhausted, parched with
thirst, the regiments came upon the plateau. Not till then did they see
the enemy, the awaited, the dreamed-of foe, the giant whose voice they
had heard at Manassas. They saw him now, and they yelled recognition.
From a thousand dusty throats came a cry, involuntary, individual,
indescribably fierce, a high and shrill and wild expression of anger
and personal opinion. There was the enemy. They saw him, they
yelled,--without premeditation, without cooperation, eac