Betty Winter, having made up her mind to put John Vaughan out of her life for all time, volunteered for field service as a nurse and by permission of the President joined Burnside\'s army before Fredericksburg.

The General had brought its effective fighting force to a hundred and thirteen thousand. Lee\'s army confronted him on the other side of the Rappahannock with seventy-five thousand men. A great battle was impending.

Burnside had reluctantly assumed command. He was a gallant, genial, cultured soldier, a gentleman of the highest type, a pure, unselfish patriot with not a trace of vulgar ambition or self-seeking. He saw the President hounded and badgered by his own party, assaulted and denounced in the bitterest terms by the opposition, and he knew that the remedy could be found only in a fighting, victorious army. A single decisive victory would turn the tide of public opinion, unite the faction-ridden army and thrill the Nation with enthusiasm.

He determined to fight at once and risk his fate as a commander on the issue of victory or defeat. His council of war had voted against an attack on Lee\'s army in Fredericksburg. Burnside brushed their decision aside as part of the quarrel McClellan has left. Even the men in the ranks were fighting each other daily in these miserable bickerings and intrigues. A victory was the remedy for their troubles, and he made up his mind to fight for it.

The General received Betty with the greatest courtesy:

"You\'re more than welcome at this moment, Miss Winter. The surgeons won\'t let you in some of their field hospitals. But there\'s work to be done preparing our corps for the battle we\'re going to fight. You\'ll have plenty to do."

"Thank you, General," she gravely answered.

Burnside read for the second time the gracious letter from the President which Betty presented.

"You\'re evidently pretty strong with this administration, Miss Betty," he remarked.

"Yes. The patience and wisdom of the President is a hobby of mine."

"Then I\'ll ask you to review the army with me. You can report to him."

Within an hour they were passing in serried lines before the Commander. Betty watched them march with a thrill of patriotic pride, a hundred and thirteen thousand men, their dark blue uniforms pouring past like the waters of a mighty river, the December sun gleaming on their polished bayonets as on so many icicles flashing on its surface.

Her heart suddenly stood still. There before her marched John Vaughan in the outer line of a regiment, his eyes straight in front, looking neither to the right nor the left. He was a private in the ranks, clean and sober, his face rugged, strong and sun-tanned.

For a moment there was a battle inside that tested her strength. He had not seen her and was oblivious of her existence apparently. But she had noted the regiment under whose flag he marched. It would be easy to find him if she wished.

When the first moment of love-sickness and utter longing passed, she had no desire to see him. The dead could bury its dead. Her love was a thing of the past. The cruel thing in this man\'s nature she had seen the first day was there still. She saw it with a shudder in his red, half-drunken eyes the day they met in Washington, saw it so plainly, so glaringly, the memory of it could never fade. He was sober and in his right mind now, his cheeks bronzed with the new life of sunshine and open air the army had given. The thing was still there. It spoke in the brute strength of his powerful body as his marching feet struck the ground, in the iron look about his broad shoulders, the careless strength with which he carried his musket as if it were a feather, and above all in the hard cold glint from his shining eyes set straight in front.

She lay awake for hours on the little white cot at the headquarters of the ambulance corps reviewing her life and dropped to sleep at last with a deep sense of gratitude to God that she was free, and could give herself in unselfish devotion to her country. Her last waking thoughts were of Ned Vaughan and the sweet, foolish worship he had laid at her feet. She wondered vaguely if he were in those grey lines beyond the river. Ned Vaughan was there this time—back with his regiment.

Lee, Jackson and Longstreet had known for days that a battle was imminent. Their scouts from over the river had brought positive information. The Confederate leaders had already planned the conflict. Their battle lines circled the hills beyond Fredericksburg, spread out in a crescent, five miles long. Nature had piled these five miles of hills around Fredericksburg as if to build an impregnable fortress. On every crest, concealed behind trees and bushes, the Confederate artillery was in place—its guns trained to sweep the wide plain with a double cross fire, besides sending a storm of shot and shell straight from the centre. Sixty thousand matchless grey infantry crouched among those bushes and lay beside stone walls, in sunken roadways or newly turned trenches.

The great fan-shaped death-trap had been carefully planned and set by a master mind. Only a handful of sharpshooters and a few pieces of artillery had been left in Fredericksburg to dispute the passage of the river and deceive Burnside with a pretense of defending the town.

The Confederate soldier was ragged and his shoes were tied together with strings. His uniform consisted of an old hat or cap usually without a brim, a shirt of striped bed-ticking so brown it seemed woven of the grass. The buttons were of discolored cow\'s horn. His coat was the color of Virginia dust and mud, and it was out at the elbow. His socks were home-made, knit by loving hands swift and tender in their endless work of love. The socks were the best things he had.

The one spotless thing about him was his musket and the bayonet he carried at his side. His spirits were high.

A barefooted soldier had managed to get home and secure a pair of boots. He started back to his regiment hurrying to be on time for the fight. The new boots hurt him so terribly he couldn\'t wear them. He passed Ned\'s regiment with his precious footgear hanging on his arm.

"Hello, Sonny, what command?" Ned cried.

"Company E, 12th Virginia, Mahone\'s brigade!" he proudly answered.

"Yes, damn you," a soldier drawled from the grass, "and you\'ve pulled your boots off, holdin\' \'em in yer hand, ready to run now!"

The laugh ran along the line and the boy hurried on to escape the chaff.

A well-known chaplain rode along a narrow path on the hillside. He was mounted on an old horse whose hip bones protruded like two deadly fangs. A footsore Confederate was hobbling as fast as he could in front of him, glancing back over his shoulder now and then uneasily.

"You needn\'t be afraid, my friend," the parson called, "I\'m not going to run over you."

"I know you ain\'t," the soldier laughed, "but ef I wuz ter let you pass me, and that thing wuz ter wobble I\'ll be doggoned ef I wouldn\'t be gored ter death!"

The preacher reined his steed in with dignity and spoke with wounded pride:

"My friend, this is a better horse than our Lord rode into Jerusalem on!"

The soldier stepped up quickly, opened the animal\'s mouth and grinned:

"Parson, that\'s the very same horse!"

A shout rose from the hill in which the preacher joined.

"Dod bam it, did ye ever hear the beat o\' that!" shouted a pious fellow who was inventing cuss words that would pass the charge of profanity.

A distinguished citizen of Fredericksburg passed along the lines wearing a tall new silk hat. He didn\'t get very far before he changed his line of march. A regular fusillade poured on him from the ranks.

"Say, man, is dat a hat er a bee gum?"

"Come down now!"

"Come down outen that hat an\' help us with these Yanks!"

"Come down I say—I know you\'re up there for I can see your legs!"

When the silk hat vanished, a solemn country boy with slight knowledge of books began to discuss the great mysteries of eternity.

Ned had won his unbounded faith and admiration by spelling at the first trial the name of his native village in the Valley of Virginia—McGaheysville. Tom held this fact to be a marvellous intellectual achievement.

"What I want to know, Ned, is this," he drawled, "who started sin in this world, anyhow? What makes a good thing good and what makes a bad thing bad, and who said so first?"

"That\'s what I\'d like to know myself, Tom," Ned gravely answered.

"An\' ye don\'t know?"

"I certainly do not."

"I don\'t see why any man that can spell like you don\'t know everything."

He paused, picked up a pebble and threw it at a comrade\'s foot and laughed to see him jump as from a Minie ball.

"You know, Ned," he went on slowly, "what I think is the prettiest piece of poetry?"

"No—what?"

"Hit\'s this:
"\'The men of high condition
That rule affairs of State;
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.\'"

"Pretty good, Tom," was the quick reply, "but I think I can beat it with something more hopeful. I got it in Sunday School out in Missouri:
"\'The sword and spear, of needless worth,
Shall prune the tree and plough the earth;
And Peace shall smile from shore to shore
And Nations learn to war no more.\'"

The country boy\'s eyes gleamed with eager approval. He had fought for nearly two years and the glory of war was beginning to lose its glamour.

"Say that again, Ned," he pleaded. "Say it again! That\'s the prettiest thing I ever heard in my life!"

He was silent a moment:

"Yes, I used to think it would be glorious to hear the thunder of guns and the shriek of shells. I\'ve changed my mind. When I hear one of \'em comin\' now, I begin to sing to myself the old-fashioned tune I used to hear in the revivals:
"\'Hark from the tomb a doleful sound!
\'My thoughts in dreadful subjects roll damnation and the dead——\'

"I\'ve an idea we\'re going to sing some o\' them old songs on this field pretty soon."

Again Ned thought of John and offered a silent prayer that he might not be in those blue lines that were going to charge into the jaws which Death had opened for them in the valley below.

John Vaughan in his tent beyond the Rappahannock was wasting no energy worrying about the coming battle. Death had ceased to be a matter of personal concern. He had seen so many dead and wounded men as he had ridden over battlefields he had come to take them as a matter of course. He was going into action now for the first time in the ranks as a private soldier and he would see things happen at closer range—that was all. He wished to see them that way. He had reached the point of utter indifference to personal danger and it brought a new consciousness of strength that was inspiring. He had stopped dreaming of the happiness of love after the exhibition he had made of himself before Betty Winter and the brutal insult with which he met her advances. Some girls might forgive it, but not this proud, sensitive, high strung daughter of the snows of New England and the sunlight of France. And so he had resolutely put the thought out of his heart.

Julius had proven himself a valuable servant. He was the best cook in the regiment, and what was still more important, he was the most skillful thief and the most plausible liar in the army. He could defend himself so nobly from the insinuations of the suspicious that they would apologize for the wrong unwittingly done his character. John had not lived so well since he could remember.

"Julius, you\'re a handy man in war!" he exclaimed after a hearty supper on fried chicken.

"Yassah—I manage ter git \'long, sah."

Julius took up his banjo and began to tune it for an accompaniment to his songs. He had a mellow rhythmical voice that always brought the crowd. He began with his favorite that never failed to please his master. The way he rolled his eyes and sang with his hands and feet and every muscle of his body was the source of unending interest to his Northern audience.

He ran his fingers lightly over the strings and the men threw down their dirty packs of cards and crowded around John\'s tent. Julius only sang one line at a time and picked his banjo between them to a low wailing sound of his own invention:
"O! far\' you well, my Mary Ann;
Far\' you well, my dear!
I\'ve no one left to love me now
And little do I care——"

He paused between the stanzas and picked his banjo to a few prose interpolations of his own.

"Dat\'s what I\'m a tellin\' ye now, folks—little do I care!"

He knew his master had been crossed in love and he rolled his eyes and nodded his woolly head in triumphant approval. John smiled wanly as he drifted slowly into his next stanza.
"An\' ef I had a scoldin\' wife
I\'d whip her sho\'s yer born,
I\'d take her down to New Orleans
An\' trade her off fer corn——"

Julius stopped with a sudden snap and whispered to John:

"Lordy, sah, I clean fergit \'bout dat meetin\' at de cullud folks\' church, sah, dat dey start up. I promise de preacher ter fetch you, sah—An\' ef we gwine ter march ter-morrow, dis here\'s de las\' night sho——"

The concert was adjourned to the log house which an old colored preacher had converted into a church. It was filled to its capacity and John stood in the doorway and heard the most remarkable sermon to which he had ever listened.

The grey-haired old negro was tremendously in earnest. He could neither read nor write but he opened the Bible to comply with the formalities of the occasion and pretended to read his text. He had taken it from his master who was a clergyman. Ephraim invariably chose the same texts but gave his people his own interpretation. It never failed in some element of originality.

The text his master had evidently chosen last were the words:
"And he healeth them of divers diseases."

Old Ephraim\'s version was a free one. From the open Bible he solemnly read:

"An\' he healed \'em of all sorts o\' diseases an\' even er dat wust o\' complaints called de Divers!"

He plunged straight into a fervent exhortation to sinners to flee from the Divers.

"I\'m gwine ter tell ye now, chillun," he exclaimed with uplifted arms, "ye don\'t know nuttin\' \'bout no terrible diseases till dat wust er all called de Divers git ye! An\' hit\'s a comin\' I tell ye. Hit\'s gwine ter git ye, too. Ye can flee ter the mountain top, an\' hit\'ll dive right up froo de air an\' git ye dar. Ye kin go down inter de bowels er de yearth an\' hit\'ll dive right down dar atter ye. Ye kin take de wings er de mornin\' an\' fly ter de ends er de yearth—an\' de Divers is dar. Dey kin dive anywhar!

"An\' what ye gwine ter do when dey git ye? I axe ye dat now? What ye gwine ter do when hit\'s forever an\' eternally too late? Dese doctors roun\' here kin cure ye o\' de whoopin\'-cough—mebbe—I hain\'t nebber seed \'em eben do dat—but I say, mebbe. Dey kin cure ye o\' de measles, mebbe. Er de plumbago or de typhoid er de yaller fever sometimes. But I warns ye now ter flee de wrath dat\'s ter come when dem Divers git ye! Dey ain\'t no doctor no good fer dat nowhar—exceptin\' ye come ter de Lord. For He heal \'em er all sorts er diseases an\' de wust er all de complaints called de Divers!
"Come, humble sinners, in whose breast er thousand thoughts revolve!"

John Vaughan turned away with a smile and a tear.

"In God\'s name," he murmured thoughtfully, "what\'s to become of these four million black children of the tropic jungles if we win now and set them free! Their fathers and mothers were but yesterday eating human flesh in naked savagery."

He walked slowly back to his tent through the solemn starlit night. The new moon, a silver thread, hung over the tree tops. He thought of that dusky grey-haired child of four thousand years of ignorance and helplessness and the tragic role he had played in the history of our people. And for the first time faced the question of the still more tragic role he might play in the future.

"I\'m fighting to free him and the millions like him," he mused. "What am I going to do with him?"

The longer he thought the blacker and more insoluble became this question, and yet he was going into battle to-morrow to fight his own brother to the death on this issue. True the problem of national existence was at stake, but this black problem of the possible degradation of our racial stock and our national character still lay back of it unsolved and possibly insoluble.

The red flash of a picket\'s gun on the shore of the river and the quick answer from the other side brought his dreaming to a sudden stop before the sterner fact of the swiftly approaching battle.

He snatched but a few hours sleep before his regiment was up and on the march to the water\'s edge. A dense grey fog hung over the river and obscured the town. The bridge builders swung their pontoons into the water and soon the sound of timbers falling into place could be heard with the splash of the anchors and the low quick commands of the officers.

The grey sharpshooters, concealed on the other shore, began to fire across the water through the fog. The sound was strangely magnified. The single crack of a musket seemed as loud as a cannon.

The work went quickly. The bullets flew wide of the mark. The fog suddenly lifted and a steady fusillade from the men hidden in the hills of Fredericksburg began to pick off the bridge builders with cruel accuracy. At times every man was down. New men were rushed to take their places and they fell.

The signal was given to the artillery and a hundred and forty-seven great guns suddenly began to sweep the doomed town. Houses crumpled like egg-shells and fires began to blaze.

The sharpshooters fell back. The bridges were laid and the grand army of a hundred and thirteen thousand began to pour across. The caissons, with their huge black, rifled-barrel guns rumbling along the resounding boards in a continuous roar like distant thunder.

On the southern shore the deep mud cut hills put every team to t............