A detachment of Federal infantry, groping their way through the thickets, had approached the Southern lines.

The skirmishers on both sides were now engaged, and the lines of battle in rear became keenly on the alert.  Some mounted officers galloped hastily back to their commands.  The sound startled the Confederate soldiers, and an officer of the 18th North Carolina, seeing a group of strange horsemen riding towards him through the darkness—­for Jackson, hearing the firing, had turned back to his own lines—­gave the order to fire.

The volley was fearfully effective.  Men and horses fell dead and dying on the narrow track.  Jackson himself received three bullets, one in the right hand, and two in the left arm, cutting the main artery, and crushing the bone below the shoulder, and as the reins dropped upon his neck, “Little Sorrel,” frantic with terror, plunged into the wood and rushed towards the Federal lines.  An overhanging bough struck his rider violently in the face, tore off his cap and nearly unhorsed him; but recovering his seat, he managed to seize the bridle with his bleeding hand, and turned into the road.  Here Captain Wilbourn, one of his staff-officers, succeeded in catching the reins; and, as the horse stopped, Jackson leaned forward and fell into his arms.  Captain Hotchkiss, who had just returned from a reconnaissance, rode off to find Dr. McGuire, while Captain Wilbourn, with a small penknife, ripped up the sleeve of the wounded arm.  As he was doing so, General Hill, who had himself been exposed to the fire of the North Carolinians, reached the scene, and, throwing himself from his horse, pulled off Jackson’s gauntlets, which were full of blood, and bandaged the shattered arm with a handkerchief.  “General,” he said, “are you much hurt?” “I think I am,” was the reply, “and all my wounds are from my own men.  I believe my right arm is broken.”

To all questions put to him he answered in a perfectly calm and self-possessed tone, and, although he spoke no word of complaint, he was manifestly growing weaker.  It seemed impossible to move him, and yet it was absolutely necessary that he should be carried to the rear.  He was still in front of his own lines, and, even as Hill was speaking, two of the enemy’s skirmishers, emerging from the thicket, halted within a few paces of the little group.  Hill, turning quietly to his escort, said, “Take charge of those men,” and two orderlies, springing forward, seized the rifles of the astonished Federals.  Lieutenant Morrison, Jackson’s aide-de-camp, who had gone down the road to reconnoitre, now reported that he had seen a section of artillery unlimbering close at hand.  Hill gave orders that the general should be at once removed, and that no one should tell the men that he was wounded.  Jackson, lying on Hill’s breast, opened his eyes, and said, “Tell them simply that you have a wounded Confederate officer.”  Lieutenants Smith and Morrison, and Captain Leigh of