The last week in June found the two armies ready for the final conflict--standing at bay, like two monsters, each measuring the strength of the other. They were on the verge of seven days of almost continual fighting. Everything that the two commanding generals could well do had been done. McClellan was vainly calling for the increase in troops he could not obtain, Lee was recruiting from every possible source, while Jackson, still maneuvering in the valley to deceive McDowell, was marching with all possible speed with the main body of his soldiers to help guard the Southern capital. On June twenty-fifth the contest began by the advance of the Union forces in the neighborhood of Seven Pines. At the same time General Jackson descended from the Shenandoah Valley and prepared for an immediate and heavy attack upon the right wing of the Union army. This was done after a consultation with General Lee, and through this means General McClellan was forced to abandon his attack and henceforth act upon the defensive. The Seven Days’ battles began properly at Mechanicsville on the twenty-sixth, and there followed in rapid succession the battles of Gaines’s Mill, Allen’s Farm, Savage Station, Glendale, and several others of lesser importance, topped by the terrific struggle at Malvern Hill, where the fierce advance of the Confederates was at last stayed by the Union forces, and General McClellan was allowed to withdraw to Harrison Landing without further molestation. To go into the details of the battles enumerated above would take far more space than we have to spare for such purposes. If the advance of the Confederate forces was masterly, equally so was the skillful retreat of the Union troops. Every mile of the ground was contested, as both sides fought their way through woods and swamps, and along roads now heavy with mud and then again ankle deep with dust, the Confederates with their capital and its supplies behind them, the Union army carrying with it thousands of sick and wounded and all that it was trying to save. But all these wonderfully interesting details must be left to the historians of the past and the future. We will pass on to the adventures Louis and Andy were to experience in those trying times, adventures more exciting than any they had yet encountered. CHAPTER XXX ADVENTURES DURING THE SEVEN DAYS’ BATTLES “Harry, we are going to move at last!” “Who said so?” “Captain Paulding. I just heard him talking to the general. I fancy we are in for a bit of hard fighting now.” “We have waited here too long, Louis, to my way of thinking. The rebels must have a tremendous reinforcement by this time.”