The men could not help it.
Physically exhausted and with ammunition running low they slowly yielded the wood.

Many of the youths wept with rage, but although they had lost thousands in five desperate charges they were compelled to see all five fail.
Dick, aghast, gazed at Warner through the smoke.
"It's true!" gasped Warner, "we didn't break the trap, Dick.

But maybe they'll succeed off there to the left! Our own commander is there, and they say that Lee himself has come to the help of Jackson!" They had been driven back at all points and their own battle was dying, but off to the left it thundered a while longer, and then as night suddenly rushed over the field it, too, sank, leaving the hostile forces on that wing also still face to face, but with the North pushed back.
The coming of night was as sudden to Dick as if it had been the abrupt dropping of a great dark blanket.

In the fury of conflict he had not noticed the gathering shadows in the west.

The dimness around him, if he had taken time to think about it, he would have ascribed to the vast columns of dust that eddied and surged about.
Again it was the dust that he felt and remembered.