At sunrise Richard Cleave's company went away. There was a dense crowd in the misty street, weeping, cheering. An old minister, standing beside the captain, lifted his arms--the men uncovered, the prayer was said, the blessing given. Again the bugle blew, the women cried farewell. The band played "Virginia," the flag streamed wide in the morning wind. Good-bye, good-bye, and again good-bye! _Attention! Take arms! Shoulder arms! Right face!_ FORWARD, MARCH! CHAPTER VI BY ASHBY'S GAP The 65th Virginia Infantry, Colonel Valentine Brooke, was encamped to the north of Winchester in the Valley of Virginia, in a meadow through which ran a stream, and upon a hillside beneath a hundred chestnut trees, covered with white tassels of bloom. To its right lay the 2d, the 4th, the 5th, the 27th, and the 33d Virginia, forming with the 65th the First Brigade, General T. J. Jackson. The battery attached--the Rockbridge Artillery--occupied an adjacent apple orchard. To the left, in other July meadows and over other chestnut-shaded hills, were spread the brigades of Bee, Bartow, and Elzey. Somewhere in the distance, behind the screen of haze, were Stuart and his cavalry. Across the stream a brick farmhouse, ringed with mulberry trees, made the headquarters of Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the forces of the Confederacy--an experienced, able, and wary soldier, engaged just now, with eleven thousand men, in watching Patterson with fifteen thousand on the one hand, and McDowell with thirty-five thousand on the other, and in listening attentively for a voice from Beauregard with twenty thousand at Manassas. It was the middle of July, 1861.