Starbuck wondered if the general assumed he was still in command of the Legion. “No, sir.”

“Sir!” the aide called from beside the guns.

Again Jackson ignored the man. “Sheep need shepherds, Major,” he told Starbuck, “and greater strength comes from a man’s faith than from his sinews. I am, God knows, the weakest of mortals!” This was proclaimed in the energetic voice of a man sure of his own soul. “But God has given me duties and granted me the strength to perform them.”

“Sir! Please!” The aide stepped closer to Jackson.

Jackson, in a surprising gesture, touched Starbuck’s arm. “Remember, Major,” he said, “‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’ Isaiah.”

“Chapter forty,” Starbuck said, “verse thirty-one.”

Jackson smiled. “I shall pray for you, Major,” the General said, then turned to his aide and his smile vanished. “What is it?”

The aide was carrying a pair of field glasses that he offered to the general. “The enemy, sir,” he said, pointing down toward the beleaguered town, “is surrendering.”

“Cease fire! Cease fire!” It was the nearest battery commander who, lacking any orders, had decided to end the bombardment on his own authority.

Jackson seized the field glasses, but even without their aid it was possible to see two Yankees walking with a white flag between the patches of smoke that drifted from the exploded shells. The Yankees were holding a grubby white flag hoisted on a pole. “It was a pitiful defense,” Jackson growled angrily. “They should be ashamed of themselves.” He hurried away, shouting for his horse to be fetched.

“Cease fire!” another gun commander shouted. The rebel guns on the farther hills had still not seen the white flag and they went on firing until the signalers managed to wigwag their flags with the message about the enemy surrender, and so a silence gradually fell across the smoke-veiled, explosive-torn valley, though it was not a total silence, for out of the distant, heat-hazed north, from across the river and the faraway hills, came the sound of other guns. Someone was fighting hard, but who, or where or why, no one in Harper’s Ferry knew.

Belvedere Delaney was seeing his first battle and finding it far more terrifying than anything he could have imagined or feared. He had ridden to the range of hills that barred the Yankees’ approach from the east and had arrived in time to witness McClellan’s attack on the southernmost of the two passes that had been guarded by pitifully small numbers of rebel troops. Prudence would have dictated that the passes be more heavily manned, but Lee had gambled on McClellan’s usual supine performance and so had stripped the defenders bare to add to the men assaulting Harper’s Ferry.

But McClellan was no longer supine. McClellan knew his opponent’s mind and now he lunged to break the rebel army.