the men, running alternately to the front, delivered their fire, stopped for a moment to load, and then again ran on.  Nearer and nearer they came, until the defenders of the trenches, already half demoralised, could mark through the smoke-drift the tanned faces, the fierce eyes, and the gleaming bayonets of their terrible foes.  The guns were already flying, and the position was outflanked; yet along the whole length of the ridge the parapets still blazed with fire; and while men fell headlong in the Confederate ranks, for a moment there was a check.  But it was the check of a mighty wave, mounting slowly to full volume, ere it falls in thunder on the shrinking sands.  Running to the front with uplifted swords, the officers gave the signal for the charge.  The men answered with a yell of triumph; the second line, closing rapidly on the first, could no longer be restrained; and as the grey masses, crowding together in their excitement, breasted the last slope, the Federal infantry, in every quarter of the field, gave way before them; the ridge was abandoned, and through the dark pines beyond rolled the rout of the Eleventh Army Corps.

7 P.M.

It was seven o’clock.  Twilight was falling on the woods; and Rodes’ and Colston’s divisions had become so inextricably mingled that officers could not find their men nor men their officers.  But Jackson, galloping into the disordered ranks, directed them to press the pursuit.  His face was aglow with the blaze of battle.  His swift gestures and curt orders, admitting of no question, betrayed the fierce intensity of his resolution.  Although the great tract of forest, covering Chancellorsville on the west, had swallowed up the fugitives, he had no need of vision to reveal to him the extent of his success. 10,000 men had been utterly defeated.  The enemy’s right wing was scattered to the winds.  The Southerners were within a mile-and-a-half of the Federals’ centre and completely in rear of their intrenchments; and the White House or Bullock road, only half-a-mile to the front, led directly to Hooker’s line of retreat by the United States Ford.  Until that road was in his possession Jackson was determined to call no halt.  The dense woods, the gathering darkness, the fatigue and disorder of his troops, he regarded no more than he did the enemy’s overwhelming numbers.  In spirit he was standing at Hooker’s side, and he saw, as clearly as though the intervening woods had been swept away, the condition to which his adversary had been reduced.

To the Federal headquarters confusion and dismay had come, indeed, with appalling suddenness.  Late in the afternoon Hooker was sitting with two aides-de-camp in the verandah of the Chancellor House.  There were few troops in sight.  The Third Corps and Pleasonton’s cavalry had long since disappeared in the forest.  The Twelfth Army Corps, with the exception of two brigades, was already advancing against Anderson; and only the trains and some artillery remained