The dew-drenched hills and misty woods echoed the volley. It was answered by the blue, but somewhat scatteringly. The blue were in retreat, evacuating Winchester, moving toward the Potomac. They were willing to attack the grey regiments known to be holding the railroad cut, but a counter-attack upon their own rear and flank had not entered into their calculations. In the fog and in the smoke it could not be told whether it was one grey brigade or two or four. Soldiers, grey or blue, might be stanch enough, but in this, as in all wars, the cry, “We’re flanked!” stirred up panic. The constitutionally timid, in either uniform, were always expecting to be flanked. They often cried wolf where there was no wolf. This morning certain of the blue cried it lustily. And here, indeed, was the wolf, grey, gaunt, and yelling! The blue, bent on flanking the two brigades and the artillery in and around the railroad cut, found themselves, in turn, flanked by the Stonewall Brigade. They were between Scylla and Charybdis, and they broke. There was a wood. They streamed toward it, and the Stonewall came, yelling, on their tracks. At the same moment at the railroad cut, Nicholls’s Louisiana regiments, Dement’s and Raines’s and Carpenter’s guns, came into touch with and routed the blue cavalry and infantry moving to the left. The cavalry—most of it—escaped, Milroy on a white horse with them. The infantry were taken prisoner. From the centre, where it, too, was victor, rose the jubilant yell of Steuart’s brigade. The Stonewall reached the rim of the wood. It was filled with purple, early light and with the forms of hurrying men. The charging line raised its muskets; the Stonewall’s finger was on the trigger. Down an aisle of trees showed a white square, raised and shaken to and fro. Out of the violet light came a voice. “Don’t fire! We surrender!” Steuart and Nicholls and the Stonewall and the artillery took, above Winchester, twenty-three hundred prisoners with arms and equipments, one hundred and seventy-five horses, and eleven stands of colours. Back in Winchester and the surrounding fortifications there fell into Early’s hands another thousand men in blue, other horses, twenty-five pieces of artillery, ammunition, and three hundred loaded wagons and stores. The remainder of Milroy’s command, evacuating the town early in the night, had passed the danger-point on the Martinsburg Pike in safety. Now it was hurrying toward the Potomac, after it Jenkins’s cavalry.