He swore in every key in the whole gamut of sound and last of all he damned himself for his utter inability to express anything he really felt. The last big gun up the hill and the infantry poured into the town of Fredericksburg, halting in regiments and brigades in its streets. Only a few shots had been exchanged with the men in grey. They had withdrawn to the heights a mile beyond. The assault had been a mere parade. Many of the inhabitants had fled in terror at the approach of the men in blue. Some of the lower types of soldiers in the Northern army broke into these deserted houses and began to rob and pillage. Julius "found" many delicacies lying about on lawns and in various unheard-of places. His master never pressed him with rude questions when his zeal bore such good results for their table. Ned Vaughan had been very much amused at an old woman who had been driven from her home by marauders. She had piled such goods and chattels as she could handle into an ox cart and drove past the grey battle lines, hurrying as fast as she could Southward. Her wrinkled old face beamed with joy at the sight of their burnished muskets and her eyes flashed with the gleam of an Amazon as she shouted: "Give it to the damned rascals, boys! Give 'em one fer me--one fer me and don't you forget it!" Far down the line she could be heard delivering her fierce exhortation. The men smiled and answered her good-naturedly. The day of wrath and death had dawned. It was too solemn an hour for boastful words. For two days the grand army in blue poured across the river and spread out through the town of Fredericksburg. The fateful morning of the 13th of December, 1862, dawned in another heavy fog. Its grey mantle of mystery shrouded the town, clung wet and heavy to the ground in the silent valley before the crescent-shaped hills and veiled the face of their heights. Under the cover of this fog the long waves of blue spread out in the edge of the valley and took their places in battle line. The grey men in the brown grass on the hills crouched behind their ditches and stone walls, gripped their guns and waited for the foe to walk into the trap their commanders had set. An unseen hand slowly lifted the misty curtain and the sun burst on the scene. The valley lay like the smooth ground of some vast arena prepared for a pageant and back of it rose the silent hills, tier on tier like the seats of a mighty amphitheatre. But the men crouching on those seats were not spectators--they were the grimmest actors in the tragedy. For a moment it was a spectacle merely--the grandest display of the pageantry of war ever made on a field of death. Franklin's division suddenly wheeled into position for its united assault on the right.