behind them. They carried the children, they half
carried the sick and the very old. They stumbled on, between the frozen
hills by the dark pointed cedars, over the bare white fields. Behind
them home was being destroyed; before them lay desolation, and all
around was winter. They had perhaps thought it out, and were headed--the
various forlorn lines--for this or that country house, but they looked
lost, remnant of a world become glacial, whirled with suddenness into
the sidereal cold, cold! and the loneliness of cold. The older children
were very brave; but there were babes, too, and these wailed and wailed.
Their wailing made a strange, futile sound beneath the thundering of the
guns.

One of these parties came through the snow to a swollen creek on which
the ice cakes were floating. Cross!--yes, but how? The leaders consulted
together, then went up the stream to find a possible ford, and came in
sight of a grey battery, waiting among the hills. "Oh, soldiers!--oh,
soldiers!--come and help!"

Down hastened a detachment, eager, respectful, a lieutenant directing,
the very battery horses looking anxious, responsible. A soldier in the
saddle, a child in front, a child behind, the old steady horses planting
their feet carefully in the icy rushing stream, over went the children.
Then the women crossed, their hands resting on the grey-clad shoulders.
All were over; all thanked the soldiers. The soldiers took off their
caps, wished with all their hearts that they had at command fire-lit
palaces and a banquet set! Having neither, being themselves without
shelter or food and ordered not to build fires, they could only bare
their heads and watch the other soldiers out of sight, carrying the
children, half carrying the old and sick, stumbling through the snow, by
the dark pointed cedars, and presently lost to view among the frozen
hills.

The shells rained destruction into Fredericksburg. Houses were battered
and broken; houses were set on fire. Through the smoke and uproar, the
explosions and detonations and tongues of flame, the Mississippians beat
back another attempt at the bridges and opened fire on boat after boat
now pushing from the northern shore. But the boats came bravely on,
bravely manned; hundreds might be driven from the bridge-building, but
other hundreds sprang to take their places--and always from the heights
came the rain of iron, smashing, shivering, setting afire, tearing up
the streets, bringing down the