Toward 6 o’clock the morning of the 19th, the officer on picket duty at Winchester came to my room, I being yet in bed, and reported artillery firing from the direction of Cedar Creek.  I asked him if the firing was continuous or only desultory, to which he replied that it was not a sustained fire, but rather irregular and fitful.  I remarked:  “It’s all right; Grover has gone out this morning to make a reconnoissance, and he is merely feeling the enemy.”  I tried to go to sleep again, but grew so restless that I could not, and soon got up and dressed myself.  A little later the picket officer came back and reported that the firing, which could be distinctly heard from his line on the heights outside of Winchester, was still going on.  I asked him if it sounded like a battle, and as he again said that it did not, I still inferred that the cannonading was caused by Grover’s division banging away at the enemy simply to find out what he was up to.  However, I went down-stairs and requested that breakfast be hurried up, and at the same time ordered the horses to be saddled and in readiness, for I concluded to go to the front before any further examinations were made in regard to the defensive line.

We mounted our horses between half-past 8 and 9, and as we were proceeding up the street which leads directly through Winchester, from the Logan residence, where Edwards was quartered, to the Valley pike, I noticed that there were many women at the windows and doors of the houses, who kept shaking their skirts at us and who were otherwise markedly insolent in their demeanor, but supposing this conduct to be instigated by their well-known and perhaps natural prejudices, I ascribed to it no unusual significance.  On reaching the edge of the town I halted a moment, and there heard quite distinctly the sound of artillery firing in an unceasing roar.  Concluding from this that a battle was in progress, I now felt confident that the women along the street had received intelligence from the battle, field by the “grape-vine telegraph,” and were in raptures over some good news, while I as yet was utterly ignorant of the actual situation.  Moving on, I put my head down toward the pommel of my saddle and listened intently, trying to locate and interpret the sound, continuing in this position till we had crossed Mill Creek, about half a mile from Winchester.  The result of my efforts in the interval was the conviction that the travel of the sound was increasing too rapidly to be accounted for by my own rate of motion, and that therefore my army must be falling back.