AS THE HOT noisy days of August were drawing to a close the bombardment abruptly ceased.

　　The quiet that fell on the town was startling. Neighbors met on the streets and stared at oneanother, uncertain, uneasy, as to what might be impending. The stillness, after the screaming days,brought no surcease to strained nerves but, if possible, made the strain even worse. No one knewwhy the Yankee batteries were silent; there was no news of the troops except that they had beenwithdrawn in large numbers from the breastworks about the town and had marched off toward thesouth to defend the railroad. No one knew where the fighting was, if indeed there was any fighting,or how the battle was going if there was a battle.

　　Nowadays the only news was that which passed from mouth to mouth. Short of paper, short ofink, short of men, the newspapers had suspended publication after the siege began, and the wildestrumors appeared from nowhere and swept through the town. Now, in the anxious quiet, crowdsstormed General Hood’s headquarters demanding information, crowds massed about the telegraphoffice and the depot hoping for tidings, good tidings, for everyone hoped that the silence ofSherman’s cannon meant that the Yankees were in full retreat and the Confederates chasing themback up the road to Dalton, But no news came. The telegraph wires were still, no trains came in onthe one remaining railroad from the south and the mail service was broken.

　　Autumn with its dusty, breathless heat was slipping in to choke the suddenly quiet town, addingits dry, panting weight to tired, anxious hearts. To Scarlett, mad to hear from Tara, yet trying tokeep up a brave face, it seemed an eternity since the siege began, seemed as though she had alwayslived with the sound of cannon in her ears until this sinister quiet had fallen. And yet, it was onlythirty days since the siege began. Thirty days of siege! The city ringed with red-clay rifle pits, themonotonous booming of cannon that never rested, the long lines of ambulances and ox cartsdripping blood down the dusty streets toward the hospitals, the overworked burial squads draggingout men when they were hardly cold and dumping them like so many logs in endless rows ofshallow ditches. Only thirty days!

　　And it was only four months since the Yankees moved south from Dalton! Only four months!

　　Scarlett thought, looking back on that far day, that it had occurred in another life. Oh, no! Surelynot just four months. It had been a lifetime.

　　Four months ago! Why, four months ago Dalton, Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain had been to heronly names of places on the railroad. Now they were battles, battles desperately, vainly fought as Johnston fell back toward Atlanta. And now, Peachtree Creek, Decatur, Ezra Church and UtoyCreek were no longer pleasant names of pleasant places. Never again could she think of them asquiet villages full of welcoming friends, as green places where she picnicked with handsomeofficers on the soft banks of slow-moving streams. These names meant battles too, and the softgreen grasses where she had sat were cut to bits by heavy cannon wheels, trampled by desperatefeet when bayonet met bayonet and flattened where bodies threshed in agonies. ... And the lazystreams were redder now than ever Georgia clay could make them. Peachtree Creek was crimson,so they said, after the Yankees crossed it. Peachtree Creek, Decatur, Ezra Church, Utoy Creek.

　　Never names of places any more. Names of graves where friends lay buried, names of tangledunderbrush and thick woods where bodies rotted unburied, names of the four sides of Atlantawhere Sherman had tried to force his army in and Hood’s men had doggedly beaten him back.

　　At last, news came from the south to the strained town and it was alarming news, especially toScarlett. General Sherman was trying the fourth side of the town again, striking again at therailroad at Jonesboro. Yankees in large numbers were on that fourth side of the town now, noskirmishing units or cavalry detachments but the massed Yankee forces. And thousands ofConfederate troops had been withdrawn from the lines close about the city to hurl themselvesagainst them. And that explained the sudden silence.

　　“Why Jonesboro?” thought Scarlett, terror striking at her heart at the thought of Tara’s nearness.

　　“Why must they always hit Jonesboro? Why can’t they find some other place to attack therailroad?”

　　For a week she had not heard from Tara and the last brief note from Gerald had added to herfears. Carreen had taken a turn for the worse and was very, very sick. Now it might be days beforethe mails came through, days before she heard whether Carreen was alive or dead. Oh, if she hadonly gone home at the beginning of the siege, Melanie or no Melanie!

　　There was fighting at Jonesboro—that much Atlanta knew, but how the battle went no one couldtell and the most insane rumors tortured the town. Finally a courier came up from Jonesboro withthe reassuring news that the Yankees had been beaten back. But they had made a sortie intoJonesboro, burned the depot, cut the telegraph wires and torn up three miles of track before theyretreated. The engineering corps was working like mad, repairing the line, but it would take sometime because the Yankees had torn up the crossties, made bonfires of them, laid the wrenched-uprails across them until they were red hot and then twisted them around telegraph poles until theylooked like giant corkscrews. These days it was so hard to replace iron rails, to replace anythingmade of iron.

　　No, the Yankees hadn’t gotten to Tara. The same courier who brought the dispatches to GeneralHood assured Scarlett of that He had met Gerald in Jonesboro after the battle, just as he wasstarting to Atlanta, and Gerald had begged him to bring a letter to her.

　　But what was Pa doing in Jonesboro? The young courier looked ill at ease as he made answer.

　　Gerald was hunting for an army doctor to go to Tara with him.

　　As she stood in the sunshine on the front porch, thanking the young man for his trouble, Scarlettfelt her knees go weak. Carreen must be dying if she was so far beyond Ellen’s medical skill thatGerald was hunting a doctor! As the courier went off in a small whirlwind of red dust, Scarlett tore open Gerald’s letter with fingers that trembled. So great was the shortage of paper in theConfederacy now that Gerald’s note was written between the lines of her last letter to him andreading it was difficult.

　　“Dear Daughter, Your Mother and both girls have the typhoid. They are very ill but we musthope for the best. When your mother took to her bed she bade me write you that under nocondition were you to come home and expose yourself and Wade to the disease. She sends her loveand bids you pray for her.”

　　“Pray for her!” Scarlett flew up the stairs to her room and, dropping on her knees by the bed,prayed as she had never prayed before. No formal Rosaries now but the same words over and over:

　　“Mother of God, don’t let her die! I’ll be so good if you don’t let her die! Please, don’t let her die!”

　　For the next week Scarlett crept about the house like a stricken animal, waiting for news,starting at every sound of horses’ hooves, rushing down the dark stair at night when soldiers cametapping at the door, but no news came from Tara. The width of the continent might have spreadbetween her and home instead of twenty-five miles of dusty road.

　　The mails were still disrupted, no one knew where the Confederates were or what the Yankeeswere up to. No one knew anything except that thousands; of soldiers, gray and blue, weresomewhere between Atlanta and Jonesboro. Not a word from Tara in a week.

　　Scarlett had seen enough typhoid in the Atlanta hospital to know what a week meant in thatdread disease. Ellen was ill, perhaps dying, and here was Scarlett helpless in Atlanta with apregnant woman on her hands and two armies between her and home. Ellen was ill—perhapsdying. But Ellen couldn’t be ill! She had never been ill. The very thought was incredible and itstruck at the very foundations of the security of Scarlett’s life. Everyone else got sick, but neverEllen. Ellen looked after sick people and made them well again. She couldn’t be sick. Scarlettwanted to be home. She wanted Tara with the desperate desire of a frightened child frantic for theonly haven it had ever known.

　　Home! The sprawling white house with fluttering white curtains at the windows, the thick cloveron the lawn with the bees busy in it, the little black boy on the front steps shooing the ducks andturkeys from the flower beds, the serene red fields and the miles and miles of cotton turning whitein the sun! Home!

　　If she had only gone home at the beginning of the siege, when everyone else was refugeeing!

　　She could have taken Melanie with her in safety with weeks to spare.

　　“Oh, damn Melanie!” she thought a thousand times. “Why couldn’t she have gone to Maconwith Aunt Pitty? That’s where she belongs, with her own kinfolks, not with me. I’m none of herblood. Why does she hang onto me so hard? If she’d only gone to Macon, then I could have gonehome to Mother. Even now—even now, I’d take a chance on getting home in spite of the Yankees,if it wasn’t for this baby. Maybe General Hood would give me an escort. He’s a nice man, GeneralHood, and I know I could make him give me an escort and a flag of truce to get me through thelines. But I have to wait for this baby! ... Oh, Mother! Mother! Don’t die! ... Why don’t this babyever come? I’ll see Dr. Meade today and ask him if there’s any way to hurry babies up so I can gohome—if I can get an escort. Dr. Meade said she’d have a bad time. Dear God! Suppose she should die! Melanie dead. Melanie dead. And Ashley— No, I mustn’t think about that, it isn’t nice.

　　But Ashley— No, I mustn’t think about that because he’s probably dead, anyway. But he made mepromise I’d take care of her. But—if I didn’t take care of her and she died and Ashley is still alive— No, I mustn’t think about ‘that It’s sinful. And I promised God I’d be good if He would just notlet Mothe............