“It means that some of our people have got deeper into the Wilderness than we have, and are feeling out Hooker. I imagine we won’t go much farther. Look how the night’s dropping down. I’d hate to pass a night alone in such a place as this Wilderness. It would be like sleeping in a graveyard.”
“You won’t have to spend the night alone here. I wish I was as sure of Heaven as that. You’ll have something like two hundred thousand near neighbors.”
The sun set and darkness swept over the Wilderness, but it was still lighted at many points by the flash of the firing and, after that ceased, by the campfires. Jackson’s advance was at an end for the time. He was fully in touch with his enemy and understood him. Hooker had retreated as far as he would go. When the fog cleared away in the morning the men in the captive balloons had informed him that heavy Southern columns were marching toward Chancellorsville. He was sure now that the full strength of the Southern army was before him, and he continued to fortify the Chancellor House and the plateau of Hazel Grove. He also threw up log breastworks through the heavily wooded country, and his lines, bristling with artillery and defended now by six score thousand men, extended along a front of six miles.
Jackson’s division lay in the Wilderness before Hooker, but out of cannon shot. All along that vast front hundreds and hundreds of pickets and riflemen on either side were keeping a vigilant watch. Jackson and his staff had dismounted and were eating their suppers around one of the campfires. The general was again impassive.
After the supper Harry walked a little distance and found the Invincibles, resting comfortably on the trodden undergrowth. The two colonels had preserved the neatness of their attire, and whatever they felt, neither showed any anxiety. But St. Clair and Langdon were free of speech.
“Well, Harry,” said Happy Tom, “is Old Jack going to send us up against intrenchments and four to one?”
“He hasn’t confided in me, but I don’t think he means to do any such thing. He remembers, as even a thick-head like you, Happy, would remember, how the splendid army of Burnside beat itself to pieces against our works at Fredericksburg.”
“Well, then, why are we here?”
“There’s sense in your question, Tom, but I can’t answer it.”
“No, there isn’t any sense in it,” interrupted St. Clair. “Do you suppose for an instant that Lee and Jackson would bring us here if they didn’t have a mighty good reason for it?”
“That’s so,” admitted Happy Tom; “but General Lee isn’t here. Yes, he is! Listen to the cheering!”
They sprang to their feet and saw Lee coming through the woods on his white horse, Traveler, a roar of cheers greeting him as he advanced. Behind him came new brigades, and Harry believed that the whole Southern army was now united before Hooker.
Lee dismounted and Jackson went forward to meet his chief. The staffs stood at a respectful distance as the two men met and began to talk, glancing now and then toward the distant lights that showed where the army of Hooker stood.