d constituting the Enemy's extreme left, comprises, as has
already been mentioned, Sloan's 4th South Carolina Regiment, Wheat's
Louisiana battalion, Terry's squadron of Virginia Cavalry, and
Davidson's section of Latham's Battery of six-pounders.

Earlier in the morning Evans has supposed, from the cannonade of Tyler's
batteries among the pines on the hills obliquely opposite the Enemy's
left, as well as from the sound of the cannonade of the Union batteries
away down the stream on the Enemy's right, near Blackburn's Ford, that
McDowell is about to make an attack upon the whole front of the Rebel
line of defense along Bull Run-by way of the Stone Bridge, and the
various fords below it, which cross that stream. But by 10 o'clock,
that Rebel general begins to feel doubtful, suspicious, and uneasy.
Despite the booming of Tyler's guns, he has caught in the distance the
rumbling sounds of Hunter's Artillery wheels.

Evans finds himself pondering the meaning of those long lines of dust,
away to his left; and then, like a flash, it bursts upon him, that all
this Military hubbub in his front, and far away to his right, is but a
feint; that the real danger is somehow connected with that mysterious
far-away rumble, and those lines of yellow dust; that the main attack is
to be on the unprepared left and rear of the Rebel position!

No sooner has the Rebel brigade-commander thus divined the Union plan of
attack, than he prepares, with the limited force at his command, to
thwart it. Burnside and he are about equidistant, by this time, from
the intersection of the Sudley road, running South, with the Warrenton
Pike, running West. Much depends upon which of them shall be the first
to reach it,--and the instinctive, intuitive knowledge of this, spurs
Evans to his utmost energy. He leaves four of his fifteen companies,
and Rogers's section of the Loudoun Artillery,--which has come up from
Cocke's Brigade, at the ford below--to defend the approaches to the
Stone Bridge, from the East side of Bull Run,--and, with the other
eleven companies, and Latham's half-battery, he hurries Westward, along
the Warrenton Pike, toward the Sudley road-crossing, to resist the
impending Union attack.

It is now 10:30 o'clock, and, as he hurries along, with anxious eyes,
scanning the woods at the North, he suddenly catches the glitter of
Burnside's bayonets coming down through them, East of the Sudley road,
in "column of regiments" toward Young's Bra