s flanked; other blue reinforcements poured in. The last grey
commands gave way. Fulkerson, too, on the left, his right now uncovered,
must leave his stone fence and save his men as best he might. Rockbridge
and Carpenter and Waters no longer thundered from the heights. The grey
infantry, wildly scattered, came in a slow surge back through the woods
where dead men lay among the spring flowers, and down the ridge and
through the fields, grey and dank in the March twilight, toward the
Valley pike. Night and the lost battle weighed upon the army. The
shadowy ambulances, the lights of the gatherers of the wounded flitting
few and far over the smoke-clouded field, made for a ghastly depression.
Sick at heart, in a daze of weariness, hunger and thirst, drunk with
sleep, mad for rest, command by command stumbled down the pike or
through the fields to where, several miles to the south, stretched the
meadows where their trains were parked. There was no pursuit. Woods and
fields were rough and pathless; it was now dark night, and Ashby held
the pike above.

A camp-fire was built for Stonewall Jackson in a field to the right of
the road, three miles from Kernstown. Here he stood, summoned Garnett,
and put him under arrest. The army understood next day that heavy
charges would be preferred against this general.

To right and left of the pike camp-fires flamed in the windy night.
Passing one of these, Richard Cleave cut short some bewailing on the
part of the ring about it. "Don't be so downcast, people! Sometimes a
defeat in one place equals a victory in another. I don't believe that
General Banks will join General McClellan just now. Indeed, it's not
impossible that McClellan will have to part with another division. Their
government's dreadfully uneasy about Washington and the road to
Washington. They didn't beat us easily, and if we can lead them up and
down this Valley for a while--I imagine that's what General Johnston
wants, and what General Jackson will procure.--And now you'd better all
go to sleep."

"Where are you going, Cleave?"

"To see about the colonel. They've just brought him to the farmhouse
yonder. Dr. McGuire says he will get well--dear old Brooke!"

He went, striding over the furrowed field past groups of men sleeping
and moaning as they slept. The stars were very bright in the clear,
cold, windy night. He looked at them and thought of the battle and of
the dead and the wounded, and of Judith and of his moth