d troops, seasoned now as the
grey were seasoned. They meant to take that empty line of hills,
willy-nilly a few Confederate guns. That done, they would be in a
position to flank Longstreet, already attacked in front by Sumner's
Grand Division. On they came, with a martial front, steady, swinging.
Uninterrupted, they marched to within a few hundred yards of Prospect
Hill. Suddenly the woods that loomed before them so dark and quiet
blazed and rang. Fifty guns were within that cover, and the fifty cast
their thunderbolts full against the dark blue line. From either side the
grey artillery burst the grey musketry, and above the crackling thunder
rose the rebel yell. Stonewall Jackson was not down the river; Stonewall
Jackson was here! Meade's Pennsylvanians were gallant fighters; but they
broke beneath that withering fire,--they fell back in strong disorder.

Grey and blue, North and South, there were gathered upon and above the
field of Fredericksburg four hundred guns. All came into action. Where
earlier, there had been fog over the plain, fog wreathing the hillsides,
there was now smoke. Dark and rolling it invaded the ruined town, it
mantled the flowing Rappahannock, it surmounted the hills. Red flashes
pierced it, and over and under and through roared the enormous sound.
There came reinforcements to Meade, division after division. In the
meantime Sumner was hurling brigades against Marye's Hill and Longstreet
was hurling them back again.

The 2d Corps listened to the terrible musketry from this front. "Old Pete's
surely giving them hell! There's a stone wall at the base of Marye's Hill.
McLaws and Ransom are holding it--sorry for the Yanks in front."--"Never
heard such hullabaloo as the great guns are making!"--"What're them
Pennsylvanians down there doing? It's time for them to come on! They've got
enough reinforcements--old friends, Gibbon and Doubleday."--"Good
fighters."--"Yes, Lord! we're all good fighters now. Glad of it. Like to
fight a good fighter. Feel real friendly toward him."--"A
thirty-two-pounder Parrott in the battery on the hill over there exploded
and raised hell. General Lee standing right by. He just spoke on, calm and
imperturbable, and Traveller looked sideways."--"Look! Meade's moving. _Do
you know, I think we ought to have occupied that tongue of land?_"

So, in sooth, thought others presently. It was a marshy, dense, and
tangled coppice projecting like a sabre tooth between the brigades of