But Shepard had been right. Lee and Jackson, advancing silently and with
every avenue of news guarded, were there behind the mountain with sixty
thousand men, flushed with victories, and putting a supreme faith in
their great commanders who so well deserved their trust. The men of the
valley and the Seven Days, wholly confident, asked only to be led against
Pope and his army, and most of them expected a battle that very day,
while the Northern commander was slipping from the well-laid trap.
Pope's judgment in this case was good and fortune, too, favored him.
Before the last of his men had left the Rapidan Lee himself, with his
staff officers, climbed to the summit of Clark's Mountain. They were
armed with the best of glasses, but drifting fogs coming down from the
north spread along the whole side of the mountain and hung like a curtain
between it and the retreating army. None of their glasses could pierce
the veil, and it was not until nearly night that rising winds caught the
fog and took it away. Then Lee and his generals saw a vast cloud of dust
in the northwest and they knew that under it marched Pope's retreating
army.
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