“A good guess. The figures of my spies say thirty-eight thousand, and we can muster scarcely five thousand here. We must move.”
Jackson spoke without emotion. His words were cold and dry, even formal. Harry's heart sank. If eight times their numbers were advancing upon them, then they must abandon Winchester. They must leave to the enemy this pleasant little city, so warmly devoted to the Southern cause and confess weakness and defeat to these friends who had done so much for them during their stay.
He felt the full bitterness of the blow. The people of the South—little immigration had gone there—were knit together more closely by ties of kinship than those of the North. Harry through the maternal line was, like most Kentuckians, of Virginia descent, and even here in Winchester he had found cousins, more or less removed it was true, but it was kinship, nevertheless, and they had made the most of it. It would have been easier for him were strangers instead of friends to see their retreat.
“Captain Sherburne, you will go to your quarters and sleep. It is obvious that you need rest,” said Jackson. “Mr. Kenton, you will wait and take the orders that I am going to write.”
Sherburne saluted and withdrew promptly. Jackson turned to a shelf of the library on which lay pen, ink and paper, and standing before it rapidly wrote several notes. It was his favorite attitude—habit of his West Point days—to write or read standing.
It took him less than five minutes to write the notes, and he handed them to Harry to deliver without delay to the brigade commanders. His tones were incisive and charged with energy. Harry felt the electric thrill pass to himself, and with a quick salute he was once more out in the rain.
Some of the brigadiers were asleep, and grumbled when Harry awoke them, but the orders soon sent the last remnants of sleep flying. The boy did not linger, but returned quickly to the manse, where General Jackson met him at the door. Other aides were coming or going, but all save one or two windows of the house were dark now, and the merrymaking was over.
“You have delivered the orders?” asked Jackson.
“Yes, sir, all of them.”
Harry also told then of the face that he had seen at the window and his belief concerning its identity.