gentle voice inquired the road and distance marched that day.  ‘Keezleton road, six-and-twenty miles.’  ‘You seem to have no stragglers.’  ‘Never allow straggling.’  ’You must teach my people; they straggle badly.’  A bow in reply.  Just then my Creoles started their band for a waltz.  After a contemplative suck at a lemon, ‘Thoughtless fellows for serious work’ came forth.  I expressed a hope that the work would not be less well done because of the gaiety.  A return to the lemon gave me the opportunity to retire.  Where Jackson got his lemons ‘No fellow could find out,’ but he was rarely without one.  To have lived twelve miles from that fruit would have disturbed him as much as it did the witty dean."* (* Destruction and Reconstruction pages 54 to 56.)

May 21.

The next day, marching in the grey of the morning, the force moved north, the Louisianians in advance.  Suddenly, after covering a short distance, the head of the column was turned to the right; and the troops, who had confidently expected that Strasburg would be the scene of their next engagement, found themselves moving eastward and crossing the Massanuttons.  The men were utterly at sea as to the intentions of their commander.  Taylor’s brigade had been encamped near Conrad’s Store, only a few miles distant, not many days before, and they had now to solve the problem why they should have made three long marches in order to return to their former position.  No word came from Jackson to enlighten them.  From time to time a courier would gallop up, report, and return to Luray, but the general, absorbed in thought, rode silently across the mountain, perfectly oblivious of inquiring glances.

At New Market the troops had been halted at crossroads, and they had marched by that which they had least expected.  The camp at Luray on the 21st presented the same puzzle.  One road ran east across the mountains to Warrenton or Culpeper; a second north to Front Royal and Winchester; and the men said that halting them in such a position was an ingenious device of Jackson’s to prevent them fathoming his plans.* (* Compare instructions to Ewell, ante.)

May 22.

The next day, the 22nd, the army, with Ewell leading, moved quietly down the Luray Valley, and the advanced guard, Taylor’s Louisianians, a six-pounder battery, and the 6th Virginia Cavalry, bivouacked that night within ten miles of Front Royal, held by a strong detachment of Banks’ small army.

Since they had Left Mount Solon and Elk Run Valley on May 19 the troops in four days had made just sixty miles.  Such celerity of movement was unfamiliar to both Banks and Stanton, and on the night of the 22nd neither the Secretary nor the general had the faintest suspicion that the enemy had as yet passed Harrisonburg.  There was serenity at Washington.  On both sides of the Blue Ridge everything was going well.  The attack on Fremont had not been followed up; and McClellan, though calling urgently for reinforcements,