As the men stood, thousands banked on thousands, awaiting the order to march, John Vaughan saw, for the first time, the grim procession pass along the lines carrying a condemned deserter, to be shot to death before his former comrades. His hands were tied across his breast with rough knotted rope and he was seated on his coffin. The War Department had gotten around the tender heart in the White House at last. The desertions had become so terrible in their frequency it was absolutely necessary to make examples of some of these men. The poor devil who sat forlornly on his grim throne riding through the sweet spring morning had no mother or sister or sweetheart to plead his cause. The men stared in silence as the death cart rumbled along the lines. It halted and the man took his place before the firing squad but a few feet away. A white cloth was bound over his eyes. The sergeant dealt out the specially prepared round of cartridges--all blank save one, that no soldier might know who did the murder. In low tones they were ordered to fire straight at the heart of the blindfolded figure. The muskets flashed and the man crumpled in a heap on the soft young grass, the blood pouring from his breast in a bright red pool beside the quivering form. And then the army moved. The stratagem of the Commander was executed with skill. But there was an eagle eye back of those hills of Fredericksburg. Lee was not only a great stark fighter, he was a past master in the arts of war. He had divined his opponent's plan from the moment of his first movement. By April the 30th, Hooker had effected his crossing and slipped into the rear of Lee's left wing. The Southerner had paid little attention to Sedgwick's menace on his front. He left but nine thousand men on Marye's Heights to hold in check this forty thousand, and by a rapid night march suddenly confronted Hooker in the Wilderness before Chancellorsville. So strong was the Union General's position he issued an exultant order to his army in which he declared: "The enemy must now flee shamefully or come out of his defences to accept battle on our own ground, to his certain destruction." The enemy had already slipped out of his defenses before Fredericksburg and at that moment was feeling his way through the tangled vines and undergrowth with sure ominous tread.