hat from reaction. Besides, the winter deepened. There was more
snow, more icy rain, and more hovering of the temperature near the zero
mark. The vast sea of mud increased, and the swollen Rappahannock,
deep at any time, flowed between the two armies. Pickets often faced
one another across the stream, sometimes firing, but oftener exchanging
the news, when the river was not too wide for the shouted voice to reach.

Harry, despite his belief that the North would hold out, heard now that
the hostile section had sunk into deep depression. The troops had not
been paid for six months. Desertion into the interior went on on a
great scale. One commander-in-chief after another had failed. After
Antietam it had seemed that success could be won, but the South had come
back stronger than ever and had won Fredericksburg, inflicting appalling
loss upon the North. Yet he heard that Lincoln never flinched. The
tall, gaunt, ugly man, telling his homely jokes, had more courage than
anybody who had yet led the Union cause.

Harry often went down to Fredericksburg, where some houses still stood
among the icy ruins. A few families had returned, but as the town was
still practically under the guns of the Northern army, it was left
chiefly to the troops.

The Invincibles were stationed here, and Harry and Dalton got leave to
spend Christmas day with its officers. Nothing could bring more fully
home to him the appalling waste and ruin of war than the sight of
Fredericksburg. Mud, ice and snow were deeper than ever in the streets.
Many of the houses had been demolished by cannon balls and fire, and
only fragments of them lay about the ground. Others had been wrecked
but partially, with holes in the roofs and the windows shot out.
The white pillars in front of colonnaded mansions had been shattered and
the fallen columns lay in the icy slough. Long icicles hung from the
burned portions of upper floors that still stood.

Used to war's ruin as he had become, Harry's eyes filled with tears at
the sight. It seemed a city dead, but not yet buried. But on Christmas
day his friends and he resolutely dismissed gloom, and, first making a
brave pretence, finally succeeded in having real cheerfulness in a fine
old brick house which had been pretty well shot up, but which had some
sound rooms remaining. Its owner had sent word that, while he could not
yet come back to it with his family, he would be glad if the Southern
army would make