When Doubleday's men had been finally repulsed, our line on the right curved from the ledge where Patrick took refuge, forward in front of Miller's orchard and garden, part of Gibbon's men lying down along the turnpike fence facing to the west. Meade's two brigades in reserve were sent forward, but when they reached Gibbon and Phelps, Ricketts was calling for assistance in the East Wood and Magilton's brigade was sent to him, leaving a gap on the left of Anderson. Another gallant effort was now made, Seymour's depleted brigade striving to cover the opening, but the enemy dashed at it as Anderson came up the slope, and the left being taken in flank, the whole broke again to the rear. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 269, 270.] Ricketts's right was also imperilled, and he withdrew his exhausted lines to reorganize and to fill their empty cartridge-boxes. There was a lull in the battle, and the combatants on both sides were making desperate efforts to reform their broken regiments. Mansfield had called the Twelfth Corps to arms at the first sound of Hooker's battle and marched to his aid. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 475.] It consisted of two divisions, Williams's and Greene's, the first of two and the other of three brigades. There were a number of new and undrilled regiments in the command, and in hastening to the front in columns of battalions in mass, proper intervals for deployment had not been preserved, and time was necessarily lost before the troops could be put in line. Indeed, some of them were not regularly deployed at all. They had left their bivouac at sunrise which, as it was about the equinox, was not far from six o'clock. They had marched across the country without reference to roads, always a very slow mode of advancing, and doubly so with undrilled men. The untrained regiments must, in the nature of things, have been very much like a mob when their so-called columns-in-mass approached the field of battle. It is impossible to reconcile the statements of the reports as to the time they became engaged. General Williams says they were engaged before seven o'clock. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 476.] General Meade says they relieved his men not earlier than ten or eleven. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 270.] It seems to be guesswork in both cases, and we are forced to judge from circumstantial evidence. Ricketts thinks he had been fighting four hours when he retired for lack of ammunition, and the Twelfth Corps men had not yet reached him. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 259.] Patrick, on the extreme right, says that his men had made their coffee in the lull after his retreat to the sheltering ledge of rocks, and had completed their breakfast before the first of Mansfield's men joined him there. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 244.] The circumstantial details given by several officers make the interval between the attack by the Twelfth Corps and the arrival of Sumner a very short one. It may be regarded as probable, therefore, that