e bitterness of shame and stubborn pride welled up to kill
the tender impulse. There were slumbering forces beneath the skin the
scenes through which he was passing had called into new life. They were
bringing new powers both of mind and body. They added nothing to the
gentler, sweeter sources of character. He began to understand how men
could feed their ambitions on the bodies of fallen hosts and still
smile.

He had felt the brutalizing touch of war. With a cynical laugh he threw
off his impulse to write and turned into his blanket dreaming of the red
carnival toward which they would march at dawn.

As the sun rose over the new sparkling fields of the South on the
morning of the 27th of April, 1863, the great movement began.

The Federal commander ordered Sedgwick's division to cross the
Rappahannock below Fredericksburg and deploy in line of battle to
deceive Lee as to his real purpose while he secretly marched his main
army through the woods seven miles above to throw them on his rear.

As the men stood, thousands banked on thousands, awaiting the order to
march, John Vaughan saw, for the first time, the grim procession pass
along the lines carrying a condemned deserter, to be shot to death
before his former comrades. His hands were tied across his breast with
rough knotted rope and he was seated on his coffin.

The War Department had gotten around the tender heart in the White
House at last. The desertions had become so terrible in their frequency
it was absolutely necessary to make examples of some of these men. The
poor devil who sat forlornly on his grim throne riding through the sweet
spring morning had no mother or sister or sweetheart to plead his cause.

The men stared in silence as the death cart rumbled along the lines. It
halted and the man took his place before the firing squad but a few feet
away.

A white cloth was bound over his eyes. The sergeant dealt out the
specially prepared round of cartridges--all blank save one, that no
soldier might know who did the murder.

In low tones they were ordered to fire straight at the heart of the
blindfolded figure. The muskets flashed and the man crumpled in a heap
on the soft young grass, the blood pouring from his breast in a bright
red pool beside the quivering form.

And then the army moved.

The stratagem of the Commander was executed with skill. But there was an
eagle eye back of those hills of Fredericksburg. Lee was not only a
great stark figh