midnight
`` Which means that we 've got to accumulate our forces at some one of four places , one guess out of four . '' Harry did not speak at all in a tone of discouragement , but his intelligent mind saw that the Northern leaders had profited by their mistakes and that the Southern general did not really know where the great impact would come . The Northern scouts and skirmishers swarmed on the other side of Bull Run , and even in the darkness this cloud of wasps was so dense that Beauregard 's own scouts could not get beyond them and tell what the greater mass behind was doing . Harry was summoned at midnight by Colonel Talbot . Behind a clump of trees some distance back of the bridge , Beauregard , Johnston , Evans , who was in direct command at the ford , Early , and several other important officers were in anxious consultation . Colonel Talbot told Harry that he would be wanted presently as a messenger , and he stood on one side while the others talked . It was then that he first heard Jubal Early swear with a richness , a spontaneity and an unction that raised it almost to the dignity of a rite .