With deliberation the blue, yet in battle front, moved eastward to the fords of the Rappahannock. After them pressed the grey. An aide, dust from head to foot, rode neck by neck with Stuart. “General! we are being hard put to it on the left—Buford’s Regulars! General Lee has a wound. We’ve got a battery, but the ammunition’s out—” The feather of Stuart turned again to the Beverly Ford road. W.H.F. Lee’s troops, re-forming, charged again, desperately, brilliantly. Munford, commanding Fitzhugh Lee’s brigade, had been up the river at Wellford’s Ford. Now, bringing with him Breathed’s battery, he fell upon the blue flank. Buford gave way; the grey came on with a yell. Down through the Beverly woods, past the spot where, at dawn, there had been outpost fighting, down to the ford again, rolled the blue. The feather of Stuart went by in pursuit. Philip Deaderick, resting after a hard fight, leaning against a yet smoking gun, watched with his fellows the retreat of the tide that had threatened to overwhelm. The tide was finding outlet by all the fords of the Rappahannock. It was streaming back from all the region about Brandy Station. It went in spirits, retiring, but hardly what one might call defeated. It had been, in sooth, all but a drawn battle—a brilliant cavalry battle, to be likened, on an enormous scale, to some flashing joust of the Middle Ages. Deaderick, watching, leaned forward with a sound almost of satisfaction. Below him passed two men, riding double, blue gallopers toward Beverly Ford. The one behind, without cloak or hat, saw him, waved his arm and shouted, “_Au revoir_, Lieutenant McNeil!” CHAPTER IX THE STONEWALL Five days before the fight at Brandy Station, Ewell and the Second Corps, quitting the encampment near Fredericksburg and marching rapidly, had disappeared in the distance toward the Valley. Two days after the fight, Hooker, well enough aware by now that grey plans were hatching, began the withdrawal of the great army that had rested so long on the northern bank of the Rappahannock. A.P. Hill and the Third Corps, watching operations from the south bank, waited only for the withdrawal from Falmouth of the mass of the enemy. When it was gone, Hill and the Third, moving with expedition, joined Lee and Longstreet at Culpeper Court-House. Stuart and his thousands rested from Brandy Station and observed movements. All day the grey infantry moved by, streaming toward the Blue Ridge. Cavalry speculated. “Jeb knows, of course, and the brigadiers I reckon, and I suppose Company Q knows, but I wish I did! Are we going to Ohio, or Maryland, or Pennsylvania, or just back to the blessed old Valley? I don’t hold with not telling soldiers things, just because they don’t have bars on their collars or stars or sashes! We’ve got a _right_ to know—”