le all things are in shadow.' And I turned to go. And then
came the sunshine. I must go now--away from the sunshine. I had but an
hour, and half of it was gone before the sunshine came."

"How shall I know," she said, "if you are living? There is a battle
coming."

"Yes. Judith, I will not write to you. Do not ask me; I will not. But
after each battle I have managed somehow to get a line to my mother. She
will tell you that I am living, well and living. I do not think that I
shall die--no, not till Maury Stafford and I have met again!"

"He is in prison. They say so many die there.... Oh, Richard, write to
me--"

But Cleave would not. "No! To do that is to say, 'All is as it was, and
I let her take me with this stain!' I will not--I will not. Circumstance
has betrayed us here this hour. We could not help it, and it has been a
glory, a dream. That is it, a dream. I will not wake till I have said
good-bye!"

They said good-bye, still in the dream, as lovers might, when one goes
forth to battle and the other stays behind. He released her, turned
short and sharp, and went down from the lone tree hill, down the side
from Greenwood, to the country road. A piece of woods hid him from
sight.

Judith stood motionless for a time, then she sat down upon the bench.
She sat like a sibyl, elbows on knees, chin in hands, her gaze narrowed
and fixed. She spoke aloud, and her voice was strange in her own ears.
"Maury Stafford in prison. Where, and how long?"

CHAPTER XLVI

FREDERICKSBURG

Snow lay deep on the banks of the Rappahannock, in the forest, up and
down the river, on the plain about the little city, on the bold heights
of the northern shore, on the hills of the southern, commanding the
plain. The snow was deep, but somewhat milder weather had set in.
December the eleventh dawned still and foggy.

General Burnside with a hundred and twenty thousand blue troops
appointed this day to pass the Rappahannock, a stream that flowed across
the road to Richmond. He had been responsible for choosing this route to
the keep of the fortress, and he must make good his reiterated, genial
assurances of success. The Rappahannock, Fredericksburg, and a line of
hills masked the onward-going road and its sign, _This way to Richmond_.
"Well, the Rappahannock can be bridged! A brigade known to be occupying
the town? Well, a hundred and forty guns admirably planted on Stafford
Heights will drive out the rebel brigade! The line of