At one o'clock in the morning of this same day Johnston received a telegram at Winchester, from Richmond, warning him that McDowell was advancing on Bull Run, with the evident intention of seizing Manassas Junction, which would cut the Confederate rail communication with the Shenandoah Valley and so prevent all chance of immediate concentration at Bull Run. Johnston saw that the hour had come. It could not have come before, as Lee and the rest had foreseen; because an earlier concentration at Bull Run would have drawn the two superior Federal forces together on the selfsame spot. There was still some risk about giving Patterson the slip. True, his three-month special-constable array was semi-mutinous already; and its term of service had only a few more days to run. True, also, that the men had cause for grievance. They were all without pay, and some of them were reported as being still "without pants." But, despite such drawbacks, a resolute attack by Patterson's fourteen thousand could have at least held fast Johnston's eleven thousand, who were mostly little better off in military ways. Patterson, however, suffered from distracting orders, and that was his undoing. Johnston, admirably screened by Stuart, drew quietly away, leaving his sick at Winchester and raising the spirits of his whole command by telling them that Beauregard was in danger and that they were to "make a forced march to save the country." Straining every nerve they stepped out gallantly and covered mile after mile till they reached the Shenandoah, forded it, and crossed the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap. But lack of training and march discipline told increasingly against them. "The discouragement of that day's march," said Johnston, "is indescribable. Frequent and unreasonable delays caused so slow a rate of marching as to make me despair of joining General Beauregard in time to aid him." Even the First Brigade, with all the advantages of leading the march and of having learnt the rudiments of drill and discipline, was exhausted by a day's work that it could have romped through later on. Jackson himself stood guard alone till dawn while all his soldiers slept.