Oh, why in Heaven's name are we delayed here through all the
precious moments! Every hour's delay will cost the lives of ten thousand
good men!"
And it is likely that in the end Colonel Winchester's reckoning was too
moderate. He and Dick gazed long in the direction in which Harper's
Ferry lay, and they listened, too, to the faint mutter of the guns among
the hills. Before dawn, scouts came in, saying that there had been hard
fighting off toward Harper's Ferry, and that Lee with the other division
of the Southern army was retreating into a peninsula formed by the
junction of the river Antietam with the Potomac, where he would await the
coming of Jackson, after taking Harper's Ferry.
"Jackson hasn't taken Harper's Ferry yet," said Dick, when he heard the
news. "Many of Banks' veterans of the valley are there, and, our men
instead of being crushed by defeat, are always improved by it."
"Still, I wish we'd march," said Warner. "I didn't come here merely to
go into camp. I might as well have stayed in the hospital."
Nevertheless they moved at daylight.
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