At noon a shout swept the Federal lines that Lee's army was in retreat. Sickles' division could see the long grey waves hurrying to the rear. They were close enough to note the ragged, dirty, nondescript clothes Jackson's men wore. No man in all the Union hosts doubted for a moment that Lee had seen the hopelessness of his position and was hurrying to save his little army of sixty-two thousand men from being crushed into pulp by the jaws of a hundred and thirty thousand in two grand divisions closing in on him. It was a reasonable supposition--always barring the utterly unexpected--another name for Stonewall Jackson, whom they seemed to have forgotten for the moment. Sickles, seeing the "retreat," sent a courier flying to Hooker, asking for permission to follow the fugitives with his twenty thousand men. Hooker consented, and Sickles leaped from his entrenchments and set out in mad haste to overtake the flying columns. He got nearly ten miles in the woods away from the battle lines before he realized that the ghostly men in grey had made good their escape. Certainly they had disappeared from view. It was five o'clock in the afternoon when Jackson's swift, silent marchers began to draw near to the unsuspecting right wing of Hooker's army under the command of General Howard. Ned Vaughan was in Jackson's skirmish line feeling the way through the tender green foliage of the spring. The days were warm and the leaves far advanced--the woods so dense it was impossible for picket or skirmisher to see more than a hundred yards ahead--at some points not a hundred feet. The thin, silent line suddenly swept into the little opening of a negro cabin with garden and patch of corn. A kindly old colored woman was standing in the doorway. She looked into the faces of these eager, slender Southern boys and they were her "children." The meaning of war was real to her only when it meant danger to those she loved. She ran quickly up to Ned, her eyes dancing with excitement: "For de Lawd's sake, honey, don't you boys go up dat road no fudder!" "Why, Mammy?" he asked with a smile. "Lordy, chile, dey's thousan's, an' thousan's er Yankees des over dat little hill dar--dey'll kill every one er you all!" "I reckon not, Mammy," Ned called, hurrying on. She ran after him, still crying: "For Gawd's sake, come back here, honey--dey kill ye sho!" She was calling still as Ned disappeared beyond the cabin into the woods redolent now with the blossoms of chinquepin bushes and the rich odors of sweet shrub. They climbed the little ridge on whose further slope lay an open field, and caught their first view of Howard's unsuspecting division. They halted and sent their couriers flying with the news to Jackson.