Throughout the seventh and eighth of June the firing from the mortars was very heavy and the Federal digging, digging continued. The grey private’s device was adopted and a number of sap rollers were set afire and destroyed, exposing the sappers behind and compelling fresh beginnings. On the Jackson road, before Hebert’s lines, the blue were using for screen cotton bales piled high upon a flatcar. This shield also was fired by musket balls wrapped in turpentine and tow. Bales and car went up in flames. The grey began new rifle-pits, and in the redans they collected thundering barrels and loaded shells. There was a feeling of impending assault. Now, too, began night sallies—Federal attacks upon the picket lines, Confederate repulses. Sentinel duty, heavy from the first, grew ever more heavy. Men fought during the day, and the same men watched at night. Day and night the trenches must be manned. The lines were long, and by now there were barely eighteen thousand grey effectives. They lived perforce in the trenches; they had no relief from the narrow ditches. The sun of a Southern June blistered and baked; then came torrential rains and soaked all things; then the sun shone again and the heavens became an inverted bowl of brass. On the twelfth of June the troops were put on half-rations; a little later, these, too, were reduced. The water grew low and very impure. There were so many dead bodies—men and animals. Fever appeared in every main work, and in every trench. Men lifted their muskets with shaking hands. CHAPTER XIII ACROSS THE POTOMAC On the thirteenth of June, Ewell and the Second Corps forded the Potomac. “Come! ’Tis the red dawn of the day, Maryland!” sang the men. “Come with thy panoplied array, Maryland!... Come, for thy shield is bright and strong, Maryland! Come, for thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland!...” From the thirteenth to the twenty-first they bivouacked on and near the battle-field of Sharpsburg. By now they were used to revisiting battle-fields. Kernstown—Manassas—many another stricken field; they knew them once, they knew them twice, they knew them times again! On the twenty-first, Ewell had orders from Lee to march northward into Pennsylvania, then eastwardly upon Harrisburg on the Susquehanna. “Old Dick” broke camp at dawn of the twenty-second. South of the Potomac waited Lee with the First and Third Corps. He waited watching “Fighting Joe Hooker,” willing to give him battle in Virginia if he so elected. On the twentieth he sent a dispatch from Berryville to Richmond, to Mr. Davis.