The Scouts of Stonewall: The Story of the Great Valley Campaign

The Southern army retired, beaten, but sullen and defiant. It did not go far, but stopped at a point where the supply train had been placed. Fires were built and some of the men ate, but others were so much exhausted that without waiting for food they threw themselves upon the ground, and in an instant were fast asleep.

Harry, for the moment, a prey to black despair, followed his general. Only one other officer, a major, was with him. Harry watched him closely, but he did not see him show any emotion. Little Sorrel like his master, although he had been under fire a hundred times, had passed through the battle without a scratch. Now he walked forward slowly, the reins lying loose upon his neck.

Harry was not conscious of weariness. He had made immense exertions, but his system was keyed so high by excitement that the tension held firmly yet a little longer. The night had come on heavy and dark. Behind him he could hear the fitful sounds of the Northern and Southern cavalry still skirmishing with each other. Before him he saw dimly the Southern regiments, retreating in ragged lines. It was almost more than he could stand, and his feelings suddenly found vent in an angry cry.

General Jackson heard him and understood.

“Don’t be grieved, my boy,” he said quietly. “This is only the first battle.”

The calm, unboastful courage strengthened Harry anew. If he should grieve how much more should the general who had led in the lost battle, and upon whom everybody would hasten to put the blame! He felt once more that flow of courage and fire from Jackson to himself, and he felt also his splendid fortune in being associated with a man whose acts showed all the marks of greatness. Like so many other young officers, mere boys, he was fast maturing in the furnace of a vast war.

The general ceased to follow the troops, but turned aside into what seemed to be a thin stretch of forest. But Harry saw that the trees grew in rows and he exclaimed:

“An orchard!”

It seemed to strike Jackson’s fancy.

“Well,” he said, “an orchard is a good place to sleep in. Can’t we make a fire here? I fear that we shall have to burn some fence rails tonight.”

Harry and the major—Hawks was his name—hitched the horses, and gathered a heap of dry fence rails. The major set fire to splinters with matches and, in a few minutes a fine fire was crackling and blazing, taking away the sharp chill of the March night.

Harry saw other fires spring up in the orchard, and he went over to one of them, where some soldiers were cooking food.

“Give me a piece of meat and bread,” he said to a long Virginian.

“Set, Sonny, an’ eat with us!”

“I don’t want it for myself.”

“Then who in nation are you beggin’ fur?”

“For General Jackson. He’s sitting over there.”

“Thunderation! The gen’ral himself! Here, boy!”

Bearing a big piece of meat in one hand and a big piece of bread in the other Harry returned to Jackson, who had not yet tasted food that day. The general ate heartily, but almost unconsciously. He seemed to be in a deep study. Harry surmised that his thoughts were on the morrow. He had learned already that Stonewall Jackson always looked forward.

Harry foraged and obtained more food for himself, and other officers of the staff who were coming up, some bearing slight wounds that they concealed. He also secured the general’s cloak, which was strapped to his saddle and insisted upon his putting it on.

The fire was surrounded presently by officers. Major Hawks had laid together and as evenly as possible a number of fence rails upon which Jackson was to sleep, but as yet no one was disposed to slumber. They had finished eating, but they remained in a silent and somber circle about the fire.

Jackson stood up presently and his figure, wrapped in the long cloak was all dark. The light did not fall upon his face. All the others looked at him. Among them was one of Ashby’s young troopers, a bold and reckless spirit. It was a time, too, when the distinction between officers and privates in the great citizen armies was not yet sharply defined. And this young trooper, some spirit of mockery urging him on, stood up and said to his general:

“The Yankees didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave Winchester, did they, general?”

Harry drew a quick, sharp breath, and there was a murmur among the officers, but Stonewall Jackson merely turned a tranquil look upon the presumptuous youth. Then he turned it back to the bed of coals and said in even tones:

“Winchester is a pleasant town to stay in, sir.”

The young cavalryman, not abashed at all, continued:

“We heard the Yankees were retreating, but I guess they’re retreating after us.”

Harry half rose and so did several of the older officers, but Jackson replied quietly:

“I think I may tell you, young sir, that I am satisfied with the result.”

The audacity of the youthful trooper could not carry him further. He caught threatening looks from the officers and slipped away in the darkness. Silence fell anew around the fire, and Jackson still stood, gazing into the coals. Soon, he turned abruptly, strode away into the darkness, but came back after a while, lay down on the fence rails and slept soundly.

Harry put four or five rails side by side to protect his body from the cold ground, lay down upon them and threw a cloak over himself. Now he relaxed or rather collapsed completely. The tension that had kept him up so long was gone, and he felt that he could not have risen from the rails had he wished. He saw wavering fires and dusky figures beside them, but sleep came in a few minutes to soothe and heal.

Bye and bye all the army, save the sentinels, slept and the victorious Northern army only two or three miles away also slept, feeling that it had done enough for one day.

Shields that night was sending messages to the North announcing his victory, but he was cherishing no illusions. He told how fierce had been the attack, and with what difficulty it had been beaten off, and in Washington, reading well between the lines they felt that another attack and yet others might come from the same source.

Harry sleeping on his bed of fence rails did not dream of the extraordinary things that the little army of Jackson, beaten at Kernstown was yet to do. McClellan was just ready to start his great army by sea for the attack on Richmond, when suddenly the forgotten or negligible Jackson sprang out of the dark and fixed himself on his flank.

The capital, despite victory, was filled with alarm and the President shared it. The veteran Shields knew this man who had led the attack, and he did not seek to hide the danger. The figure of Stonewall Jackson, gigantic and menacing, showed suddenly through the mists. If McClellan went on to Richmond with the full Northern strength he might launch himself on Washington.

The great scheme of invasion was put out of joint. Shields, although victorious for the time, could not believe that Jackson would attack with so small an army unless he expected reinforcements, and he sent swift expresses to bring back a division of 8,000 men which was marching to cover Washington. Banks, his superior officer, on the way to Washington, too, heard the news at Harper’s Ferry and halted there, and Lincoln, detaching a whole corps of nearly 40,000 men from McClellan’s army, ordered them to remain at Manassas to protect the capital against Jackson. A dispatch was sent to Banks ordering him to push the valley campaign with his whole strength.

But when Harry rose the next morning from his fence rails he knew nothing of these things. Nor did anyone else in the Southern army, unless it was Stonewall Jackson who perhaps half-divined them. Harry thought afterward that he had foreseen much when he said to the impudent cavalryman that he was satisfied with the result at Kernstown.

They lingered there a little and then began a retreat, unharrassed by pursuit. Scouts of the enemy were seen by Ashby’s cavalry, who hung like a curtain between them and the army, but no force strong enough to do any harm came in sight. Harry had secured another horse and most of his duty was at the rear, where he was often sent by the general to get the latest news from Ashby.

He quickly met Sherburne over whose dress difficulties had triumphed at last. His fine cloak, rent in many places, was stained with mud and there was one large dark spot made by his own blood. His face was lined deeply by exhaustion and deep disappointment.

“They were too much for us this time, Harry,” he said bitterly. “We can’t beat two to one all the time. How does the general take it?”

“As if it were nothing. He’ll be ready to fight again in a few days, and we must have struck a hard blow anyhow. The enemy are not pursuing.”

“That’s true,” said Sherburne more cheerfully. “Your argument is a good one.”

The army came to a ridge called Rude’s Hill and stopped there. Harry was already soldier enough to see that it was a strong position. Before it flowed a creek which the melting snows in the mountains had swollen to a depth of eight or ten feet, and on another side was a fork of the Shenandoah, also swollen. Here the soldiers began to fortify and prepare for a longer stay while Jackson sent for aid.

Harry was not among the messengers for help. Jackson had learned his great ability as a scout, and now he often sent him on missions of observation, particularly with Captain Sherburne, to whom St. Clair and Langdon were also loaned by Colonel Talbot. Thus the three were together when they rode with Sherburne and a hundred men a few days after their arrival at the ridge.

They were well wrapped in great coats, because the weather, after deceiving for a while with the appearance of spring, had turned cold again. The enemy’s scouts and spies were keeping back, where they could blow on their cold fingers or walk a while to restore the circulation to their half frozen legs.

Sherburne was his neat and orderly self again and St. Clair was fully his equal. Langdon openly boasted that he was going to have a dressing contest between them for large stakes as soon as the war was over. But all the young Southerners were in good spirits now. They had learned of the alarm caused in the North by Kernstown, and that a third of McClellan’s army had been detached to guard against them. Nor had Banks and Shields yet dared to attack them.

“There’s what troubles Banks,” said Sherburne, pointing with his saber to a towering mass of mountains which rose somber and dark in the very center of the Shenandoah Valley. “He doesn’t know which side of the Massanuttons to take.”

Harry looked up at these peaks and ridges, famous now in the minds of all Virginians, towering a half mile in the air, clothed from base to summit with dense forest of oak and pine, although today the crests were wrapped in snowy mists. They cut the Shenandoah valley into two smaller valleys, the wider and more nearly level one on the west. Only a single road by which troops could pass crossed the Massanuttons, and that road was held by the cavalry of Ashby.

“If Banks comes one way and he proves too strong for us we can cross over to the other,” said Sherburne. “If he divides his force, marching into both valleys, we may beat one part of his army, then pass the mountain and beat the other.”

Sherburne had divined aright. It was the mighty mass of the Massanuttons that weighed upon Banks. As he looked up at the dark ridges and misty crests his mind was torn by doubts. His own forces, great in number though they were, were scattered. Fremont to his right on the slopes of the Alleghanies had 25,000 men; there were other strong detachments under Milroy and Schenck, and he had 17,000 men under his own eye. So he was hesitating while the days were passing and Jackson growing stronger.

“I suppose the nature of the country helps us a lot,” said Harry as he looked up at the Massanuttons, following Sherburne’s pointing saber.

“It does, and we need help,” said Sherburne. “Even as it is they would have been pushing upon us if it hadn’t been for the cavalry and the artillery. Every time a detachment advanced we’d open up on it with a masked battery from the woods, and if pickets showed their noses too close horsemen were after them in a second. We’ve had them worried to death for days and days, and when they do come in force Old Jack will have something up his sleeve.”

“I wonder,” said Harry.

CHAPTER VII. ON THE RIDGES

As they rode in the shadow of the Massanuttons Harry continued to wonder. The whole campaign in the valley had become to him an interminable maze. Stonewall Jackson might know what he intended to do, but he was not telling. Meanwhile they marched back and forth. There was incessant skirmishing between cavalry and pickets, but it did not seem to signify anything. Banks, sure of his overwhelming numbers, pressed forward, but always cautiously and slowly. He did not march into any trap. And Harry surmised that Jackson, much too weak to attack, was playing for time.

Sherburne and his troop paused at the very base of the Massanuttons and Harry, who happened to be with them, looked up again at the lofty summits standing out so boldly and majestically in the middle of the valley. The oaks and maples along their slopes were now blossoming into a green that matched the tint of the pines, but far up on the crests there was still a line of snow, and white mists beyond.

“Why not climb the highest summit?” he said to Sherburne. “You have powerful glasses and we could get a good view of what is going on up the valley.”

“Most of those slopes are not slopes at all. They’re perpendicular like the side of a house. The horses could never get up.”

“But they can certainly go part of the way, and some of us can climb the rest on foot.”

Sherburne’s eyes sparkled. The spirit of adventure was strong within him. Moreover the task, if done, was worth while.

“Good for you, Harry,” he exclaimed. “We’ll try it! What do you say, St. Clair, you and Langdon?”

“I follow where you lead, and I hope that you lead to the top of the mountain,” replied St. Clair.

“Likely it’s cold up there,” said Langdon, “but there are higher and colder mountains and I choose this one.”

They had learned promptness and decision from Stonewall Jackson, and Sherburne at once gave the order to ascend. Several men in his troop were natives of that part of the valley, and they knew the Massanuttons well. They led and the whole troop composed of youths followed eagerly. Bye and bye they dismounted and led their horses over the trails which grew slippery with wet and snow as they rose higher.

When they paused at times to rest they would all look northward over the great valley, where a magnificent panorama had gradually risen into view. They saw a vast stretch of fields turning green, neat villages, dark belts of forest, the gleam of brooks and creeks, and now and then, the glitter from a Northern bayonet.

At length the chief guide, a youth named Wallace, announced that the horses could go no farther. Even in summer when the snow was all gone and the earth was dry they could not find a footing. Now it was certain death for them to try the icy steeps.

Sherburne ordered the main body of the troop to halt in a forested and sheltered glen in the side of the mountain, and, choosing Harry, St. Clair, Langdon, the guide Wallace, and six others, he advanced with them on foot. It was difficult climbing, and more than once they were bruised by falls, but they learned to regard such accidents as trifles, and ardent of spirit they pressed forward.

“I think we’ll get a good view,” said Sherburne. “See how brilliantly the sun is shining in the valley.”

“Yes, and the mists on the crests are clearing away,” said Harry.

“Then with the aid of the glasses we can get a sweep up the valley for many miles. Now boys, here we go! up! up!”

If it had not been for the bushes they could never have made the ascent, as they were now in the region of snow and ice and the slopes were like glass. Often they were compelled to crawl, and it was necessary, too, to exercise a good deal of care in crawling.

St. Clair groaned as he rose after climbing a rock, and brushed the knees of his fine gray trousers.

“Cheer up, Arthur,” said Langdon, “it could have been worse. The sharp stones there might have cut holes through them.”

But in spite of every difficulty and danger they went steadily toward the summit, and streamers of mist yet floating about the mountain often enclosed them in a damp shroud. Obviously, however, the clouds and vapors were thinning, and soon the last shred would float away.

“It ain’t more’n a hundred feet more to the top,” said Wallace, “an’ it’s shore that the sun will be shinin’ there.”

“Shining for us, of course,” said Langdon. “It’s a good omen.”

“I wish I could always look for the best as you do, Tom,” said St. Clair.

“I’m glad I can. Gay hearts are better than riches. As sure as I climb, Arthur, I see the top.”

“Yes, there it is, the nice snowy bump above us.”

They dragged themselves upon the loftiest crest, and, panting, stood there for a few minutes in several inches of snow. Then the wind caught up the last shreds and tatters of mist, and whipped them away southward. Every one of them drew a deep, sharp breath, as the great panorama of the valley to the northward and far below was unrolled before them.

The brilliant sunshine of early spring played over everything, but far down in the valley they seemed to see by contrast the true summer of the sunny south, which is often far from sunny. But seen from the top of the mountain the valley was full of golden rays. Now the roofs of the villages showed plainly and they saw with distinctness the long silver lines that marked the flowing of the rivers and creeks. To the east and to the west further than the eye could reach rose the long line of dim blue mountains that enclosed the valley.

But it was the glitter of the bayonets in the valley that caused the hearts of the Virginians to beat most fiercely. Banners and guidons, clusters of white tents, and dark swarms of men marked where the foot of the invading stranger trod their soil. The Virginians loved the great valley. Enclosed between the blue mountains it was the richest and most beautiful part of all their state. It hurt them terribly to see the overwhelming forces of the North occupying its towns and villages and encamped in its fields.

Harry, not a Virginian himself, but a brother by association, understood and shared their feeling. He saw Sherburne’s lips moving and he knew that he was saying hard words between his teeth. But Sherburne’s eyes were at the glasses, and he looked a long time, moving them slowly from side to side. After a while he handed them to Harry.

The boy raised the glasses and the great panorama of the valley sprang up to his eyes. It seemed to him that he could almost count the soldiers in the camps. There was a troop of cavalry riding to the southward, and further to the left was another. Directly to the north was their battlefield of Kernstown, and not far beyond it lay Winchester. He saw such masses of the enemy’s troops and so many signs of activity among them that he felt some movement must be impending.

“What do you think of it, Harry?” said Sherburne.

“Banks must be getting ready to move forward.”

“I think so, too. I wish we had his numbers.”

“More men are coming for us. We’ll have Ewell’s corps soon, and General Jackson himself is worth ten thousand men.”

“That’s so, Harry, but ten thousand men are far too few. McDowell’s whole corps is available, and with it the Yankees can now turn more than seventy thousand men into the valley.”

“And they can fight, too, as we saw at Kernstown,” said St. Clair.

“That’s so, and I’m thinking they’ll get their stomachs full of it pretty soon,” said Langdon. “Yesterday about dusk I went out in some bushes after firewood, and I saw a man kneeling. It struck me as curious, and I went up closer. What do you think? It was Old Jack praying. Not any mock prayer, but praying to his Lord with all his heart and soul. I’m not much on praying myself, but I felt pretty solemn then, and I slid away from there as quick and quiet as you please. And I tell you, fellows, that when Stonewall Jackson prays it’s time for the Yankees to weep.”

“You’re probably right, Langdon,” said Captain Sherburne, “but it’s time for us to be going back, and we’ll tell what we’ve seen to General Jackson.”

As they turned away a crunching in the snow on the other slope caused them to stop. The faces of men and then their figures appeared through the bushes. They were eight or ten in number and all wore blue uniforms. Harry saw the leader, and instantly he recognized Shepard. It came to him, too, in a flash of prescience, that Shepard was just the man whom he would meet there.

Sherburne, who had seen the blue uniforms, raised a pistol and fired. Two shots were fired by the Union men at the same instant, and then both parties dropped back from the crest, each on its own side.

Sherburne’s men were untouched and Harry was confident that Shepard’s had been equally lucky—the shots had been too hasty—but it was nervous and uncomfortable work, lying there in the snow, and waiting for the head of an enemy to appear over the crest.

Harry was near Captain Sherburne, and he whispered to him:

“I know the man whose face appeared first through the bushes.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Shepard. He’s a spy and scout for the North, and he is brave and dangerous. He was in Montgomery when President Davis was inaugurated. I saw him in Washington when I was there as a spy myself. I saw him again in Winchester just before the battle of Kernstown, and now here he is once more.”

“Must be a Wandering Jew sort of a fellow.”

“He wanders with purpose. He has certainly come up here to spy us out.”

“In which he is no more guilty than we are.”

“That’s true, but what are we going to do about it, captain?”

“Blessed if I know. Wait till I take a look.”

Captain Sherburne raised himself a little, in order to peep over the crest of the ridge. A rifle cracked on the other side, a bullet clipped the top of his cap, and he dropped back in the snow, unhurt but startled.

“This man, Shepard, is fully as dangerous as you claim him to be,” he said to Harry.

“Can you see anything of them?” asked St. Clair.

“Not a thing,” said Harry.

“If we show they shoot, and if they show we shoot,” said Langdon. “Seems to me it’s about the most beautiful case of checkmate that I’ve known.”

“Perhaps we can stalk them,” said St. Clair.

“And perhaps they can stalk us,” said Langdon. “But I think both sides are afraid to try it.”

“You’re right, Langdon,” said Captain Sherburne, “It’s a case of checkmate. I confess that I don’t know what to do.”

“We could wait here while they waited too, and if we waited long enough it would get so dark we couldn’t see each other. But captain, you are a kind-hearted and sympathetic man, do you see any fun in sitting in the snow on top of a mountain, waiting to kill men whom you don’t want to kill or to be killed by men who don’t want to kill you?”

“No, Tom, I don’t,” replied Captain Sherburne with a laugh, “and you’re talking mighty sound sense. This is not like a regular battle. We’ve nothing to gain by shooting those men, and they’ve nothing to gain by shooting us. The Massanuttons extend a long distance and there’s nothing to keep scouts and spies from climbing them at other places. We’ll go away from here.”

He gave the order. They rose and crept as softly as they could through the snow and bushes down the side of the mountain. Harry looked back occasionally, but he saw no faces appear on the crest. Soon he heard Langdon who was beside him laughing softly to himself.

“What’s the matter, Tom?” he asked.

“Harry, if I could take my pistol and shoot straight through this mountain the bullet when it came out on the other side would hit a soldier in blue clothes, going at the same rate of speed down the mountain.”

“More than likely you’re right, Tom, if they’re sensible, and that man Shepard certainly is.”

Further down they met some of their own men climbing up. The troop had heard the shots and was on the way to rescue, if rescue were needed. Captain Sherburne explained briefly and they continued the descent, leading their horses all the way, and breathing deep relief, when they stood at last in the plain.

“I’ll remember that climb,” said Langdon to Harry as he sprang into the saddle, “and I won’t do it again when there’s snow up there, unless General Jackson himself forces me up with the point of a bayonet.”

“The view was fine.”

“So it was, but the shooting was bad. Not a Yank, not a Reb fell, and I’m not unhappy over it. A curious thing has happened to me, Harry. While I’m ready to fight the Yankee at the drop of the hat I don’t seem to hate ‘em as much as I did when the war began.”

“Same here. The war ought not to have happened, but we’re in it, and to my way of thinking we’re going to be in it mighty deep and long.”

Langdon was silent for a little while, but nothing could depress him long. He was soon chattering away as merrily as ever while the troop rode back to General Jackson. Harry regarded him with some envy. A temperament that could rejoice under any circumstances was truly worth having.

Sherburne reported to Ashby who in return sent him to the commander, Harry going with him to resume his place on the staff. Jackson heard the report without comment and his face expressed nothing. Harry could not see that he had changed much since he had come to join him. A little thinner, a little more worn, perhaps, but he was the same quiet, self-contained man, whose blue eyes often looked over and beyond the one to whom he was talking, as if he were maturing plans far ahead.

Harry occupied a tent for the time with two or three other young officers, and being permitted a few hours off duty he visited his friends of the Invincibles, Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire. The two old comrades already had heard the results of the scout from St. Clair and Langdon, but they gave Harry a welcome because they liked him. They also gave him a camp stool, no small luxury in an army that marches and fights hard, using more gunpowder than anything else.

Harry put the stool against a tree, sat on it and leaned back against the trunk, feeling a great sense of luxury. The two men regarded him with a benevolent eye. They, too, were enjoying luxuries, cigars which a cavalry detail had captured from the enemy. It struck Harry at the moment that although one was of British descent and the other of French they were very much alike. South Carolina had bred them and then West Point had cast them in her unbreakable mold. Neat, precise, they sat rigidly erect, and smoked their cigars.

“Do you like it on the staff of General Jackson, Harry,” asked Colonel Talbot.

“I felt regrets at leaving the Invincibles,” replied Harry truthfully, “but I like it. I think it a privilege to be so near to General Jackson.”

“A leader who has fought only one battle in independent command and who lost that,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, thoughtfully—he knew that Harry would repeat nothing, “and who nevertheless has the utmost confidence of his men. He does not joke with them as the young Napoleon did with his soldiers. He has none of the quality that we call magnetic charm, and yet his troops are eager to follow him anywhere. He has won no victories, but his men believe him capable of many. He takes none of his officers into his confidence, but all have it. Incredible, but true. Why is it?”

He put his cigar back in his mouth and puffed meditatively. Colonel Leonidas Talbot, who also had been puffing meditatively while Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire was speaking, now took his cigar from his mouth, blew away the delicate rings of smoke, and said in an equally thoughtful tone:

“It occurs to me, Hector, that it is the power of intellect. Stonewall Jackson has impressed the whole army down to the last and least little drummer with a sense of his mental force. I tell you, sir, that he is a thinker, and thinkers are rare, much more rare than people generally believe. There is only one man out of ten thousand who does not act wholly according to precedent and experience. Habit is so powerful that when we think we are thinking we are not thinking at all, we are merely recalling the experiences of ourselves or somebody else. And of the rare individuals who leave the well-trod paths of thought to think new thoughts, only a minutely small percentage think right. This minutely small fraction represents genius, the one man in a million or rather ten million, or, to be more accurate, the one man in a hundred million.”

Colonel Leonidas Talbot put the cigar back in his mouth and puffed with regularity and smoothness. Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, in his turn, took his cigar from his mouth once more, blew away the fine white rings of smoke and said:

“Leonidas, it appears to me that you have hit upon the truth, or as our legal friends would say, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I am in the middle of life and I realize suddenly that in all the years I have lived I have met but few thinkers, certainly not more than half a dozen, perhaps not more than three or four.”

He put his cigar back in his mouth and the two puffed simultaneously and with precision, blowing out the fine, delicate rings of smoke at exactly the same time. Gentlemen of the old school they were, even then, but Harry recognized, too, that Colonel Leonidas Talbot had spoken the weighty truth. Stonewall Jackson was a thinker, and thinkers are never numerous in the world. He resolved to think more for himself if he could, and he sat there trying to think, while he absently regarded the two colonels.

Colonel Leonidas Talbot, after two minutes perhaps, took the cigar from his mouth once more and said to Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire:

“Fine cigars the Yankees make, Hector.”

“Quite true, Leonidas. One of the best I have ever smoked.”