But we're eighty thousand strong, just sitting here on the heights and waiting.

Harry, they'll cross that river again soon, and when they go back they'll be far less than a hundred and twenty thousand!" He spoke with no sign of exultation.

Instead it was the boding tone of an old prophet, rather than the sanguine voice of youth.
The fog deepened for a little while, and then some of the marching columns were hidden.

Out of the mists and gloom came the quick music of many bands, playing the Northern brigades on to death.

Then the fog lifted again, and along the heights ran the blaze of the Southern cannon as they sent shot and shell into the black masses of the Union troops crowding by Fredericksburg.
But as the echoes of the shots died away, Harry heard again the bands playing, and from the great Northern army below came mighty rolling cheers.
"The battle is here now, Harry," said Dalton, "and this is the biggest army we've ever faced." The Union brigades, black in the somber winter dawn, seemed endless to Harry.