Sharpe, advancing simultaneously on Birge's left, tried in vain to keep the alignment with Ricketts and with Birge; for now the peculiar feature of the long alignment across the swerving road began to work, yet, by reason of the screen of timber, without the cause being immediately observed by any one. At first the order of battle formed a right angle with the road, but the bend once reached, in the effort to keep closed upon it, at every step Ricketts was taking ground more and more to the left, while the point of direction for Birge, and equally for Sharpe, was the enemy in their front, standing almost in the exact prolongation of the defile, from which line, still plainly marked by Ash Hollow, the road, as we have seen, was steadily diverging. In short, to continue the march parallel with the road compelled a left half-wheel, while the battle was with the enemy straight in front, so that even had it been possible for Emory to execute his orders literally he must have offered his wheeling flank fairly to Rodes and to Gordon. Sharpe, seeing that the gap between himself and Ricketts was growing every moment wider, in vain tried to cover it by more than one oblique movement to the left, and Keifer, whose brigade formed the right of Ricketts, being also among the first to perceive the fault, tried to make it good by deploying three of his regiments across the interval. Birge's advance had borne him far to the right, and as Sharpe, in the vain attempt to keep his alignment with Ricketts, was always drifting to the left, there came a second and smaller gap between the two leading brigades of Grover. Into this Molineux was quickly thrust, and, deploying in parade order, under a heavy fire of cannon and musketry, at once began firing in return with great effect on the advancing columns of the enemy. But, shortly before this happened, the interval between Ricketts and Sharpe had grown to be nearly four hundred yards wide, and Birge's advance being stayed at nearly the same instant, Early saw his opportunity and seized it by throwing against the diverging flanks of Sharpe and Ricketts the fresh brigade that Battle had that moment brought up from Stephenson's. This new impulse once more carried forward the rest of Rodes's division; Ramseur rallied; Early restored his formation; and the whole Confederate line swept forward with renewed impetuosity, broke in the whole right of Ricketts and the left of Sharpe, surged around both flanks of Molineux, and swept back Birge. Sharpe's line, thus taken fairly in flank, was quickly rolled up. By this, the left regiment of Molineux, the gallant 22d Iowa, being in quite open ground, was greatly exposed, so that it, too, was presently swept back. The 159th New York and the 13th Connecticut, after holding on stiffly for a time under the partial cover of a sort of gully, were in like manner swept away, and on the right Birge's men paid the penalty of their own impetuosity. The left of Ricketts,