the power of words--and suddenly the hand of Fate clutched and shook
him to death. Ewell stormed his "Star Fort" near Winchester, with the
bayonet; drove him to headlong flight; got in rear of him, capturing
nearly all his command; and poor Milroy scarce managed to escape, with
a small body-guard, beyond the Potomac.

"In my opinion Milroy's men will fight better _under a soldier!_"

It was his commanding officer, Hooker, who wrote those words a few days
afterward. From the hands of his own general came that unkindest cut!

Exit Milroy, thus amid hisses and laughter--the hornet's nest at
Winchester was swept away--and Ewell headed straight for Pennsylvania.

Longstreet came up rapidly to fill the gap in the line--Hill followed
Longstreet--and then the world beheld the singular spectacle of an army
extended in a long skirmish line over a hundred miles, with another
army massed not daring to assail it.

Hooker did not see his "opening;" but Lincoln did. One of his
dispatches has been quoted--here is another as amusing and as
judicious.

"If the head of Lee's army is at Martinsburg," Lincoln wrote Hooker,
"and the tail of it on the Plank road, between Fredericksburg and
Chancellorsville, _the animal must be very slim somewhere--could you
not break him?_"

But Hooker could not. He did not even try. Lee's movements seemed to
paralyze him--his chief of staff wrote:--