The gunners could not see the Southern troops drawn back behind the ridges, but Harry believed that they might be guided by signals from men on opposite slopes.

But if signalmen were there they were hidden by the forest even from his glasses.
The smoke from the cannon was gathering heavily in the narrow valley, so heavily that it began to obscure what was passing there in the Northern army.

But the four, remembering the injunction of Jackson, a man who must be obeyed to the last and minutest detail, still sought to pierce through the smoke both with the naked eye and with glasses.

As a rift appeared Harry saw a moving mass of men in blue.

It was a great body of troops and the sun shining through the rift glittered over bayonets and rifle barrels.