Those of Sickles' soldiers who had thrown themselves down upon the grass behind the stacks now breathed more freely at seeing their comrades turn off from the main road, at a short mile out, where the roofs of a farmhouse and out-buildings glistened in the morning sun. This was the Sherfy place--a very paradise in appearance to these fasting and footsore soldiers, to whom its ripening fruits and luxuriant golden wheat, tall and nearly ripe for the sickle, seemed the incarnation of peace and plenty. Many a wistful glance was cast at the peach orchard, as these troops turned the corner where it stood. The cross-road then came straight down toward Little Round Top, so that in a quarter of an hour more the marching column heard the welcome orders to "Halt!" "Stack arms!" "Rest!" [Sidenote: The Enemy covet it.] If the comparison be not too far-fetched, this Sherfy farm and the angle formed by these two divergent roads were destined to be the La Haie Sainte of this Waterloo. One word more is essential to the description. The ground out there, over which the cross-road passed on toward the Union lines, swells handsomely up to a rounded knoll that makes a very pretty as well as noticeable object in the landscape. The field-glasses of General Lee and of his staff had already determined this knoll to be a splendid position for their artillery. That peach-orchard angle with the adjoining knoll--in reality the highest point lying between the two armies--was, for this reason, the first object of the Confederates' attention on this day. It was a stepping-stone toward Cemetery Ridge. It was now in possession of Sickles' skirmishers, posted there the night before, and already exchanging shots with those of the enemy.[58] [Sidenote: The Swale again.] Uneasy at seeing no enemy in front of him, Sickles decided to push his skirmishers still farther out. They accordingly went forward into the woods of Seminary Ridge, where the enemy was supposed to be. They had scarcely arrived there when they fell in with some Confederates, by whom, after a sharp encounter, they were driven back, but not before they had seen heavy columns moving off to gain the Union left under cover of the woods. This information made Sickles still more uneasy, impressed as he was with the belief that an attack upon him was imminent, and that he would have to receive it where the low ground he then occupied[59] offered little chance for making a successful defence. Little Round Top rose on his left, his front stretched across the adjoining hollow, the peach-orchard knoll loomed threateningly before him in the distance, the skirmish fire was growing hotter out there, his orders were either vague or unsatisfactory, and so Sickles, commanding a single corps of the army, having convinced himself that the line, as formed, was defective, determined in his own mind to abandon it for one of his own choosing, orders or no orders. [Sidenote: Longstreet at Work.]