After a while a murmur came from the long Southern line along the heights and on the ridges.

Horses stirred here and there, cannon, moved to new positions, made sighing sounds as their wheels sank in the mud; sabres and bayonets clanked, thousands of men whispered to one another.

All these varying sounds united into one great soft voice which was like the murmur of a wind through the summer night.
Toward five o'clock in the morning, when the darkness had not diminished a whit, a messenger from General Lee rode up with a note for General Jackson.

It merely stated that all was ready and to hold the positions that he had taken up the night before.

Jackson wrote a brief reply by the light of a lantern that an orderly held, and the messenger galloped away with it.