the eighth day, including the two for rest, he had driven his men one
hundred and twenty miles over mountains and across rivers. They also
passed through cold and heavy snow, but they now found themselves in
lower country at the village of Orange Court House. The larger town of
Fredericksburg lay less than forty miles away. Harry was not familiar
with the name of Fredericksburg, but it was destined to be before long
one that he could never forget. In after years it was hard for him to
persuade himself that famous names were not famous always. The name of
some village or river or mountain would be burned into his brain with
such force and intensity that the letters seemed to have been there
since the beginning.

It lacked but two days of December when they came to Orange Court House,
but they heard that the Northern front was more formidable and menacing
than ever. Burnside had shown more energy than was expected of him.
He had formed a plan to march upon Richmond, and, despite the
alterations in his course, he was clinging to that plan. He had at the
least, so the scouts said, one hundred and twenty thousand men and four
hundred guns. The North, moreover, which always commanded the water,
had gunboats in the Rappahannock below Fredericksburg, and they would be,
as they were throughout the war, a powerful arm.

Harry knew, too, the temper and resolution of the North, the slow,
cold wrath that could not be checked by one defeat or half a dozen.
Antietam, as he saw it, had merely been a temporary check to the
Confederate arms, where the forces of Lee and Jackson had fought off
at least double their number. The Northern men could not yet boast of
a single clean-cut victory in the battles of the east, but they were
coming on again as stern and resolute as ever. Defeat seemed to serve
only as an incentive to them. After every one, recruits poured down