fire that Trimble’s men swept on without a check.  The two regiments, one on either side of the railroad, halted within a hundred yards of the Federal guns.  The countersign was passed down the ranks, and the bugles sounded the charge.  The Northern gunners, without waiting for the onset, fled through the darkness, and two batteries, each with its full complement of guns and waggons, became the prize of the Confederate infantry.  Stuart, coming up on the flank, rode down the fugitives.  Over 300 prisoners were taken, and the remainder of the garrison streamed northward through the deserted camps.  The results of this attack more than compensated for the exertions the troops had undergone.  Only 15 Confederates had been wounded, and the supplies on which Pope’s army, whether it was intended to move against Longstreet or merely to hold the line of the Rappahannock, depended both for food and ammunition were in Jackson’s hands.

August 27.

The next morning Hill’s and Taliaferro’s divisions joined Trimble.  Ewell remained at Bristoe; cavalry patrols were sent out in every direction, and Jackson, riding to Manassas, saw before him the reward of his splendid march.  Streets of warehouses, stored to overflowing, had sprung up round the Junction.  A line of freight cars, two miles in length, stood upon the railway.  Thousands of barrels, containing flour, pork, and biscuit, covered the neighbouring fields.  Brand-new ambulances were packed in regular rows.  Field-ovens, with the fires still smouldering, and all the paraphernalia of a large bakery, attracted the wondering gaze of the Confederate soldiery; while great pyramids of shot and shell, piled with the symmetry of an arsenal, testified to the profusion with which the enemy’s artillery was supplied.

It was a strange commentary on war.  Washington was but a long day’s march to the north; Warrenton, Pope’s headquarters, but twelve miles distant to the south-west; and along the Rappahannock, between Jackson and Lee, stood the tents of a host which outnumbered the whole Confederate army.  No thought of danger had entered the minds of those who selected Manassas Junction as the depot of the Federal forces.  Pope had been content to leave a small guard as a protection against raiding cavalry.  Halleck, concerned only with massing the whole army on the Rappahannock, had used every effort to fill the storehouses.  If, he thought, there was one place in Virginia where the Stars and Stripes might be displayed in full security, that place was Manassas Junction; and here, as nowhere else, the wealth of the North had been poured out with a prodigality such as had never been seen in war.  To feed, clothe, and equip the Union armies no expenditure was deemed extravagant.  For the comfort and well-being of the individual soldier the purse-strings of the nation were freely loosed.  No demand, however preposterous, was disregarded.  The markets of Europe were called upon to supply the