about midnight
The configuration of the valley , indeed , was such that from this point of observation it seemed entirely shut in , and one could not but have wondered how the road which found a way out of it had found a way into it , and whence came and whither went the waters of the stream that parted the meadow two thousand feet below . No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war ; concealed in the forest at the bottom of that military rat-trap , in which half a hundred men in possession of the exits might have starved an army to submission , lay five regiments of Federal infantry . They had marched all the previous day and night , and were resting . At nightfall they would take to the road again , climb to the place where their unfaithful sentinel now slept , and , descending the other slope of the ridge , fall upon a camp of the enemy at about midnight . Their hope was to surprise it , for the road led to the rear of it . In case of failure , their position would be perilous in the extreme ; and fail they surely would , should accident or vigilance apprise the enemy of the movement . The sleeping sentinel in the clump of laurel was a young Virginian named Carter Druse .