Less easily accounted for was a movement of theirs on our right. They had held here a steep bluff covered with underbrush, as their advanced line. Through the night they abandoned this, which gave them the best position for opposing Lew. Wallace, and had fallen back across some open fields to the scrub-oak woods beyond. The advantage of compelling our advance over unprotected openings, while they maintained a sheltered position, was obvious, but certainly not so great as holding a height which artillery and infantry would make as difficult to take as many a fort. Nevertheless they fell back. The reader who is patient enough to wade through this narration, will scarcely fail to observe that thus far I have said little or nothing of any plan of attack or defence among our commanders. It has been simply because I have failed to see any evidence of such a plan. To me it seemed on Sunday as if every Division General at least--not to say in many cases, every individual soldier--imitated the good old Israelitish plan of action, by which every man did what seemed good in his own eyes. There may have been an infinite amount of generalship displayed, in superintending our various defeats and re-formations and retreats, but to me it seemed of that microscopic character that required the magnifying powers of a special permit for exclusive newspaper telegraphing on government lines to discover. Sunday night there was a council of war, but if the Major-General commanding developed any plans there, beyond the simple arrangement of our line of battle, I am very certain that some of the Division Commanders didn't find it out. Stubborn fighting alone delayed our losses on Sunday; stubborn fighting alone saved us when we had reached the point beyond which came the child's "jumping-off place;" and stubborn fight, with such generalship as individual Division Commanders displayed, regained on Monday what we had lost before. To those who had looked despairingly at the prospects Sunday evening, it seemed strange that the Rebels did not open out on us by daybreak again. Their retreat before the bomb-shells of the gunboats, however, explained the delay. Our own divisions were put in motion almost simultaneously. By seven o'clock Lew. Wallace opened the ball by shelling, from the positions he had selected the night before, the Rebel battery, of which mention has been made. A brisk artillery duel, a rapid movement of infantry across a shallow ravine, as if to storm, and the Rebels enfiladed and menaced in front, limbered up and made the opening of their Monday's retreating.