"It is a strange thing to look at these men, so ragged, slovenly, sleeveless, without a superfluous ounce of flesh on their bones, with wild, matted hair, in mendicants rags, and to think, when the battle flags go to the front, how they can and do fight. 'There is only one attitude in which I should never be ashamed of you seeing my men, and that is when they are fighting.' These were General Lee's words to me the first time I ever saw him." _At Chancellorsville_ _The Struggle in the Pine Woods when death struck at Southern hearts_ From the close of the battle at Fredericksburg in December 1862, until the spring of 1863, General Burnside's Army of the Potomac and General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia lay in camp; the first on the north and the second on the south bank of the Rappahannock. The little town, now fairly well repopulated by returned refugees, lay between the hosts. The Northern lines practically began at Falmouth, where General Daniel Butterfield had headquarters, and at which spot young Count Zeppelin and his assistants were busily arranging to send up a great Observation Balloon with a signalling outfit. Southward, Lee's army stretched over thirty-three miles, from the fords of the Rappahannock, where the hard riding cavalrymen of Stuart and W. H. F. Lee watched, to Port Royal, Jackson's right. Burnside's headquarters were the Phillips house and Chatham, (recently owned by the famous journalist, Mark Sullivan and where he and Mrs. Sullivan made their home for some years). Hooker, part of the time, was at the Phillips house, Lee in a tent, near Fredericksburg, while General Jackson had headquarters first in an outbuilding at Moss Neck, now the home of Count d'Adhemar and later in a tent. It was here that he became fond of little Farley Carbin, who came every day to perch on his knee and receive little presents from him. One day he had nothing to give her, and so, ere she left, he tore the gold braid from the new hat that was part of a handsome uniform just given him by General "Jeb" Stuart, and placed it like a garland on her pretty curly head. During the winter the General, who from the beginning of the war never slept at night outside his army's camp, nor had an hour's leave of absence, saw for the first time since he left Lexington, and for next to the last time on earth, his wife and little daughter, whom he so fervently loved. They spent some weeks near him at Moss Neck. [Sidenote: _Christmas at the Front_]