The gnarled and knotted oaks were distorted and the bushes, even in the flush of a May morning, were black and ugly.
At evening it was indescribably desolate, and save when the armies came there was no sound but the lone cry of the whip-poor-will, one of the saddest of all notes.
It was upon this forest that Harry looked, and he wondered, as many officers much older and much higher in rank than he wondered, that Hooker, with forces so much superior, should draw back into its shades.
And many of the Union generals, too, had protested in vain against Hooker's orders.

They knew, as the Confederate generals knew, that Hooker was a brave man, and they never understood it then or afterwards.
"It gives us our chance," said Dalton, with sudden intuition, to Harry.
"We'll carry the battle to them in the forest, and there numbers will not count so much." "Look!" exclaimed Harry.

"They're withdrawing farther into the Wilderness.

There go the last bayonets!" "It's so," said Dalton.

"I can still see a few of them moving among the trees and thickets.