Just as Longstreet, who had arrived and taken part in the action, was advancing to turn the Federal flank on the Brock road, he was wounded by one of his own men; and the movement was arrested in mid career. But Lee adhered to his plan. He determined to lead his column in person, and would have done so, but for the remonstrances of his men. “To the rear!” shouted the troops, as he rode in front of them; “to the rear!” And he was obliged to obey. He was not needed. The gray lines surged forward: the thicket was full of smoke and quick flashes of flame: then the woods took fire, and the scene of carnage had a new and ghastly feature added to it. Dense clouds of smoke rose, blinding and choking the combatants: the flames crackled, soared aloft, and were blown in the men’s faces; and still, in the midst of this frightful array of horrors, the carnival of destruction went on without ceasing. At nightfall, General Lee had driven the enemy from their front line of works--but nothing was gained. What _could_ be gained in that wretched country, where there was nothing but thicket, thicket! General Grant saw his danger, and, no doubt, divined the object of his adversary,--to arrest and cripple him in this tangle-wood, where numbers did not count, and artillery could not be used. There was but one thing to do--to get out of the jungle. So, on the day after this weird encounter, in which he had lost nearly 20,000 men, and Lee about 8,000, Grant moved toward Spottsylvania. The thickets of the Wilderness were again silent, and the blue and gray objects in the undergrowth did not move. The war-dogs had gone to tear each other elsewhere. XXXIII. BREATHED AND HIS GUN. In the din and smoke of that desperate grapple of the infantry, I have lost sight of the incessant cavalry combats which marked each day with blood. And now there is no time to return to them. A great and sombre event drags the pen. With one scene I shall dismiss those heroic fights--but that scene will be superb. Does the reader remember the brave Breathed, commanding a battalion of the Stuart horse artillery? I first spoke of him on the night preceding Chancellorsville, when he came to see Stuart, at that time he was already famous for his “do-or die” fighting. A Marylander by birth, he had “come over to help us:” had been the right-hand man of Pelham; the favorite of Stuart; the admiration of the whole army for a courage which the word “reckless” best describes;--and now, in this May, 1864, his familiar name of “Old Jim Breathed,” bestowed by Stuart, who held him in high favor, had become the synonym of stubborn nerve and _élan_, unsurpassed by that of Murat. To fight his guns to the muzzles, or go in with the sabre, best suited Breathed. A veritable bull-dog in combat, he shrank at nothing, and led everywhere. I saw brave men in the war--none braver than Breathed. When he failed in any thing, it was because reckless courage could not accomplish it.