About
three in the afternoon
`` Will you listen , '' said Stafford , `` to the wind in the pines ? and did you ever see the automatic chess-player ? '' Two days later , Fremont , having bridged the Shenandoah , crossed , and pushed his cavalry with an infantry support southward by the pike . About three in the afternoon of the sixth , Ashby 's horses were grazing in the green fields south of Harrisonburg , on the Port Republic road . To the west stretched a belt of woodland , eastward rose a low ridge clad with beech and oak . The green valley lay between . The air , to-day , was soft and sweet , the long billows of the Blue Ridge seen dreamily , through an amethyst haze .