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[12]
in readiness, when we were startled by a fierce volley of musketry on our immediate right.
This of course put an end to the conference and every one rushed to his position in anticipation of a night attack.
The 11th Virginia Regiment, Colonel Samuel Garland, was moved promptly to the rear of the point where the firing occurred, which was repeated, and after a good deal of trouble we succeeded in ascertaining that it proceeded from two of my companies, which had been posted in the woods on the bank of the stream to the right of my position, in order to cover some points where a crossing might be effected.
The officers of one of the companies declared that a body of the enemy could be seen, stealthily moving down the opposite bank, and that the firing had been at that body and had been returned.
The firing by this time had ceased and no movement of the enemy could be heard.
This affair, however, kept us on the alert all night, but I became satisfied that it resulted from some mistake, caused perhaps by the movement of some straggling persons of our own command, in the darkness, in the woods.
Such alarms were not uncommon, subsequently, when two opposing forces were lying on their arms at night in front of each other.
A very slight circumstance would sometimes produce a volley at night from the one or the other side, as it might be.
At light on the morning of the 20th, instead of our being required to advance to the attack of the enemy according to the programme of the night before, General Longstreet came in a great hurry to relieve me, and with orders for my brigade to move as rapidly as possible to a point on our right on the road leading from Yates' Ford, below Union Mills, to Manassas Junction.
As soon as relieved, I moved in the direction indicated, and the head of my column was just emerging into Camp Walker, from the woods in rear of McLean's farm, --where I had been on the 18th, at the time the enemy opened his artillery fire beyond Blackburn's Ford,--when
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