"Molly, you're uncanny!" said Unity. "Oh me! Love and Hate—North and South—and we'll not have the bulletin until to-morrow—"
Miss Lucy rose. "I am going upstairs to Judith and tell her that I simply know Richard is safe. There are too many broken love stories in the world, and the Carys have had more than their share."
CHAPTER_XXVIII
THE LONGEST WAY ROUND
Having, in a month and ten days, marched four hundred miles, fought four pitched battles and a whole rosary of skirmishes, made of naught the operations of four armies, threatened its enemy's capital and relieved its own, the Army of the Valley wound upward toward the Blue Ridge from the field of Port Republic. It had attended Shields some distance down the Luray road. "Drive them!—drive them!" had said Jackson. It had driven them then, turning on its steps it had passed again the battlefield. Frémont's army, darkening the heights upon the further side of that river of burned bridges, looked impotently on. Frémont shelled the meadow and the wheat fields over which ambulances and surgeons were yet moving, on which yet lay his own wounded, but his shells could not reach the marching foe. Brigade after brigade, van, main and rear, cavalry, infantry, artillery, quartermaster, commissary and ordnance trains, all disappeared in the climbing forest. A cold and chilling rain came on; night fell, and a drifting mist hid the Army of the Valley. The next morning Frémont withdrew down the Valley toward Strasburg. Shields tarried at Luray, and the order from Washington directing McDowell to make at once his long delayed junction with McClellan upon the Chickahominy was rescinded.
The rear guard of the Army of the Valley buried the dead of Port Republic in trenches, and then it, too, vanished. To the last wagon wheel, to the last poor straggler, all was gone. It was an idiosyncrasy of Jackson's to gather and take with him every filing. He travelled like a magnet; all that belonged to him went with him. Long after dark, high on the mountain-side, an aide appeared in the rain, facing the head of the rear brigade.
"The general says have you brought off every inch of the captured guns?"