Geary's division of this corps having kept straight on up the pike to Cemetery Hill, Hancock turned it off to the extreme left, partly to make some show in that as yet unguarded quarter, about which he felt by no means easy, partly to hold control of the Emmettsburg and Taneytown roads (see map), by which more of the Union troops were marching to the field. Stretching itself out in a thin line as far as Little Round Top, and after sending one regiment out on picket toward the Emmettsburg road, and just to the right of the Devil's Den, the division slept on its arms, in a position destined to become celebrated, first on account of Hancock's foresight in seizing it, next by reason of its desertion by the general intrusted with its defence. [Sidenote: Second Corps nearly up.] Hancock had the satisfaction of feeling that the position was safe for the present when he rode back to Taneytown, first to meet his own corps on the road, and next to find that the whole army had already been ordered up. Throwing Gibbon an order to halt as he passed, Hancock kept on to headquarters. His work was done. [Sidenote: Union Line at Dark.] Nothing but the importance which this critical period of the battle has assumed to our own mind could justify the giving of all these details by which the gradual patching up and lengthening out of the line, until it took the form it subsequently held, and from a front of a few hundred yards grew to be two miles long, may be better followed. [Sidenote: Part of Third Corps up.] [Sidenote: Find Sherfy's on Map.] [Sidenote: Other Corps where?] As regards the rest of the army, some part of the Third Corps had now reached the ground by the Emmettsburg road, though too late to get into line; its pickets, however, were thrown out on that road as far to the left as a cross-road leading down from Sherfy's house to Little Round Top. The rest of this corps would come up by this same road in the morning. The Second Corps was halting for the night three miles back, also in a position to guard the left of the line. Nominally, therefore, five of the seven corps were up at dark that night, or at least near enough to go into position by daybreak. The Fifth being then at Hanover, twenty-four miles back, and the Sixth, which was the strongest in the army, at Manchester, thirty-five miles from Gettysburg, it still became a question whether the whole Union army could be assembled in season to overcome Lee's superiority on the field.[50] [Sidenote: Chances against Meade.] Indeed, when Meade did finally order the whole army to Gettysburg, the chances were as ten to one against its getting up in time to fight as a unit. Would that portion of the Union forces found on Cemetery Hill on the morning of the second be beaten in detail, as the First and Eleventh had been the day before? [Sidenote: Lee's Plan.] [Sidenote: Longstreet demurs.]