Lee had been intending to push another attack, but, as usual after the great battles of the Civil War, Chancellorsville was followed by a terrific storm.

It burst over the Wilderness in violence and fury.
The thunder was so loud and the lightning so vivid that it seemed for a while as if another mighty combat were raging.

Then the rain came in a deluge, and the hoofs of horses and the wheels of cannon sank so deep in the spongy soil of the Wilderness that it became practically impossible to move the army.
After a night of storm, Harry and Dalton rode forward with Sherburne and his troop of cavalry, sent by Stuart to beat up the enemy and see what he was doing.

They found that Hooker's whole army had crossed the river in the night on his bridges.
Twice the Northern army had been driven back across the Rappahannock at the same place--after Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville--but Harry felt no elation as he returned slowly through the mud with Sherburne.
"If it were in my power," he said, "I'd gladly trade the victory of Chancellorsville, and more like it, to have our General back." By "our General" he of course meant Jackson, and both Sherburne and Dalton nodded assent.

The news had come to them that Jackson was not doing well.