The army passed through the defile, entered another portion of the valley, forded a fork of the Shenandoah, crossed the Luray Valley, and then entered the steep passes of the Blue Ridge. Here they found autumn gone and winter upon them. As the passes rose and the mountains, clothed in pine forest, hung over them, the soft haze of Indian summer fled, and in its place came a low, gray sky, somber and chill. Sharp winds cut them, but the blood flowed warm and strong in their veins as they trod the upward path between the ridges. Once more a verse of the defiant Dixie rolled and echoed through the lofty and bleak pine forest:
"How the South's great heart rejoices
At your cannon's ringing voices;
To arms!
For faith betrayed, and pledges broken,
Wrongs inflicted, insults spoken
To arms!
Advance the flag of Dixie."
Now on the heights the last shreds and patches of autumn were blown away by the winds of winter. The sullen skies lowered continually. Flakes of snow whirled into their faces, but they merely bent their heads to the storm and marched steadily onward. They had not been called Jackson's Foot Cavalry for nothing. They were proud of the name, and they meant to deserve it more thoroughly than ever.
"I take it," said Dalton to Harry, "that some change has occurred in the Northern plans. The Army of the Potomac must be marching along in a new line."
"So do I. The battle will be fought in lower country."
"And we will be with Lee and Longstreet in a day or two."
"So it looks."
Jackson stopped twice, a full day each time, for rest, but at the end of the eighth day, including the two for rest, he had driven his men one hundred and twenty miles over mountains and across rivers. They also passed through cold and heavy snow, but they now found themselves in lower country at the village of Orange Court House. The larger town of Fredericksburg lay less than forty miles away. Harry was not familiar with the name of Fredericksburg, but it was destined to be before long one that he could never forget. In after years it was hard for him to persuade himself that famous names were not famous always. The name of some village or river or mountain would be burned into his brain with such force and intensity that the letters seemed to have been there since the beginning.
It lacked but two days of December when they came to Orange Court House, but they heard that the Northern front was more formidable and menacing than ever. Burnside had shown more energy than was expected of him. He had formed a plan to march upon Richmond, and, despite the alterations in his course, he was clinging to that plan. He had at the least, so the scouts said, one hundred and twenty thousand men and four hundred guns. The North, moreover, which always commanded the water, had gunboats in the Rappahannock below Fredericksburg, and they would be, as they were throughout the war, a powerful arm.
Harry knew, too, the temper and resolution of the North, the slow, cold wrath that could not be checked by one defeat or half a dozen. Antietam, as he saw it, had merely been a temporary check to the Confederate arms, where the forces of Lee and Jackson had fought off at least double their number. The Northern men could not yet boast of a single clean-cut victory in the battles of the east, but they were coming on again as stern and resolute as ever. Defeat seemed to serve only as an incentive to them. After every one, recruits poured down from the north and west to lift anew the flag of the Union.