sabre, led the advance over the rolling
grass-land. The Confederate batteries, with a terrible cross-fire,
swept the Northern ranks from end to end. The volley of the infantry,
lying behind their parapet, struck them full in face. But the horse
and his rider lived through it all. The men followed close, charging
swiftly up the slope, and then the leader, putting his horse straight
at the embankment, stood for a moment on the top. The daring feat was
seen by the whole Confederate line, and a yell went up from the men
along the railroad, "Don't kill him! don't kill him!" But while the
cry went up horse and rider fell in one limp mass across the
earthwork, and the gallant Northerner was dragged under shelter by
his generous foes.

With such men as this to show the way what soldiers would be
backward? As the Russians followed Skobeleff's grey up the bloody
slopes of Plevna, so the Federals followed the bright chestnut of
this unknown hero, and not till the colours waved within thirty paces
of the parapet did the charge falter. But, despite the supports that
came thronging up, Jackson's soldiers, covered by the earthwork,
opposed a resistance which no mere frontal attack could break. Three
times, as the lines in rear merged with the first, the Federal
officers brought their men forward to the assault, and three times
were they hurled back, leaving hundreds of their number dead and
wounded on the blood-soaked turf. One regiment of the Stonewall
division, posted in a copse beyond the railroad, was driven in; but
others, when cartridges failed them, had recourse, like the Guards at
Inkermann, to the stones which lay along the railway-bed; and with
these strange weapons, backed up by the bayonet, more than one
desperate effort was repulsed. In arresting Garnett after Kernstown,
because when his ammunition was exhausted he had abandoned his
position, Jackson had lost a good general, but he had taught his
soldiers a useful lesson. So long as the cold steel was left to them,
and their flanks were safe, they knew that their indomitable leader
expected them to hold their ground, and right gallantly they
responded. For over thirty minutes the battle raged along the front
at the closest range. Opposite a deep cutting the colours of a
Federal regiment, for nearly half an hour, rose and fell, as bearer
after bearer was shot down, within ten yards of the muzzles of the
Confederate rifles, and after the fight a hundred dead Northerners