John leaped from his horse, turned, and ran straight for the woods. He didn't propose to be captured by Stuart's cavalry, that was sure. He turned to look back and ran into a tree. He climbed it. If he could only get to the top before they saw him. He had been an expert climber when a boy in Missouri and he thanked God now for this. He never paused for breath until he had reached the very top, where he drew the swaying branches close about his body to hide from the coming foe. The sun was yet hanging over the trees in the woods—a ball of sullen red fire lighting up the hiding place of the last poor devil for the eyes of the avenging hosts who were sweeping on. If it were night it would be all right. But this was no place for a man with an ounce of sense in broad daylight. The sharpshooters would see him in that tall tree sure. They couldn't take him prisoner up there—they would shoot him like a squirrel just to see him tumble and, by the Lord Harry, they would do it, too!
He got down from the tree faster than he climbed up and from the edge of the woods spied a dense swamp. He never stopped until he reached the centre of it, and dropped flat on his stomach.
"Thank God, at last!" he sighed.
The Northern army fleeing for Washington had left on the field twenty-eight guns, four thousand muskets, nine regimental flags, four hundred and eighty-one dead, a thousand and eleven wounded and fourteen hundred captured. The road to the rear was literally sown with pistols, knapsacks, blankets, haversacks, wagons, tools and hospital stores.
And saddest of all the wreck, lay the bright new handcuffs with coils of hang-man's rope scattered everywhere.
The Southern army had lost three hundred and eighty-seven killed, including two brigadier generals, Bee and Barton, and fifteen hundred wounded. They were so completely scattered and demoralized by their marvellous and overwhelming victory that any systematic pursuit of their foe was impossible.
The strange silent figure on the little sorrel horse turned his blue eyes toward Washington from the last hilltop as darkness fell, lifted his head suddenly toward the sky, and cried:
"Ten thousand fresh troops and I'd be in Washington to-morrow night!"
The troops were not to be had, and Stonewall Jackson ordered his men to bivouac for the night and sent out his details to bury the dead and care for the wounded of both armies.
Monday morning dawned black and lowering and before the sun rose the rain poured in steady torrents. Through every hour of this desolate sickening day the weary, terror-stricken stragglers trailed through the streets of Washington—their gorgeous plumes soaked and drooping, the Scotch bonnets dripping the rain straight down their necks and across their dirty foreheads, the Garibaldi shirts, the blue and grey, the black and yellow and gold and blazing Zouave uniforms rain-soaked and mud-smeared.