Several miles to the eastward the large old house of Chancellorsville, set upon rising ground, reflected the sun from its westerly windows. All about it rolled the Wilderness, shadowy beneath the vivid skies. It lay like a sea, touching all the horizon. On the deep porch of the house, tasting the evening coolness, sat Fighting Joe Hooker and several of his officers. Eastward there was firing, as there had been all day, but it, too, was decreased in volume, broken in continuity. The main rebel body, thought the Federal general, must be about ready to draw off, follow the rebel advance in its desperate attempt to get out of the Wilderness, to get off southward to Gordonsville. The 12th Corps was facing the "main body". The interchange of musketry, eastward there, had a desultory, waiting sound. From the south, several miles into the depth of the Wilderness, came a slow, uninterrupted booming of cannon. Pleasanton and Sickles were down there, somewhere beyond Catherine Furnace. Pleasanton and Sickles were giving chase to the rebel detachment,—whatever it was; Stonewall Jackson and a division probably—that was trying to get out of the Wilderness. At any rate, the rebel force was divided. When morning dawned it should be pounded small, piece by piece, by the blue impact! "We've got the men, and we've got the guns. We've got the finest army on the planet!"
The sun dropped. The Wilderness rolled like a sea, hiding many things. The shaggy pile of the forest turned from green to violet. It swept to the pale northern skies, to the eastern, reflecting light from the opposite quarter, to the southern, to the splendid west. Wave after wave, purple-hued, velvet-soft, it passed into mist beneath the skies. There was a perception of a vastness not comprehended. One of the men upon the Chancellor's porch cleared his throat. "There's an awful feeling about this place! It's poetic, I suppose. Anyhow, it makes you feel that anything might happen—the stranger it was, the likelier to happen—"
"I don't feel that way. It's just a great big rolling plain with woods upon it—no mountains or water—"
"Well, I always thought that if I were a great big thing going to happen I wouldn't choose a chopped up, picturesque place to happen in! I'd choose something like this. I—"
"What's that?"
Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!
Hooker, at the opposite end of the porch, sprang up and came across. "Due west!—Howard's guns?—What does that mean—"
Boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom!
Fighting Joe Hooker ran down the steps. "Bring my horse, quick! Colonel, go down to the road and see—"
"My God! Here they come!"