Baton Rouge seethed with excitement on the day of Jennie\'s arrival. Every wagon and dray was pressed into service. The people were hauling their cotton to be burned on the commons. Negroes swarmed over the bales, cutting them open, piling high the fleecy lint and then applying the torch. The flames leaped upward with a roar and dropped as suddenly into a smoldering and smoking mass.

A crowd rushed to the wharf to see them fire an enormous flat-boat piled mountain-high with cotton. A dozen bales had been broken open and the whole floating funeral pyre stood shrouded in spotless white which leaped into flames as it was pushed into the stream.

Along the levee as far as the eye could reach negroes crawled like black ants rolling the cotton into the river. The ties were smashed, and the white bundle of cotton tumbled into the water and was set on fire. Each bale sent up its cloud of smoke until the surface of the whole river seemed alive with a fleet of war crowding its steam to run fresh batteries. Another flat-boat was piled high, its bales cut open, soaked with whiskey, and set on fire. The blue flames of burning alcohol gave a touch of weird and sinister color to the scene.

The men who owned this cotton stood by cheering and helping in its destruction. The two flat-boats with flames leaping into the smoke pall of the darkened skies led the fleet of fire down the river to greet Farragut\'s men in their way.

Every saloon was emptied and every gutter flowed with wines and liquors.

Jennie found her grandmother resting serenely in her great rocking chair, apparently indifferent to the uproar of the town. The household with its seventy-odd negro servants was running its usual smooth, careless course.

Jennie read aloud the announcement in the morning paper of Butler\'s order to New Orleans:

"All devices, signs, and flags of the Confederacy shall be suppressed—"

She clenched her fist and sprang to her feet.

"Good! I\'ll devote all my red, white and blue silk to the manufacture of Confederate flags! When one is confiscated—I\'ll make another. I\'ll wear one pinned on my bosom. The man who says, \'Take it off,\' will have to pull it off himself. The man who does that—well, I\'ve a pistol ready!—"

"What are you saying, dear?" the old lady asked with her thin hand behind her ear.

"Oh, nothing much, grandma dear," was the sweet answer. "I was only wishing I were a man!"

She slipped her arms about her thin neck and whispered this in deep, tragic tones. With a bound she was off to the depot to see the last squad of soldiers depart for the front before the gunboats arrived.

They waved their hats to the crowds of women and children as the train slowly pulled out.

"God bless you, ladies! We\'re going to fight for you!"

Jennie drew her handkerchief, waved and sobbed the chorus in reply.

"God bless you, soldiers! Fight for us!"

Four hours later the black gunboats swung at their anchors. The proud little conquered city lay at the mercy of their guns.

Jennie watched them with shining eyes, and that without fear. The union flag was streaming from every peak and halyard.

The girl rushed home, made a flag five inches long, pinned it to her shoulder and deliberately walked down town. Mattie Morgan joined her at the corner and drew one from the folds of her dress, emboldened by the example.

They marched straight to the State House terrace to take a good look at the Brooklyn lying close inshore. Fifteen or twenty Federal officers were standing on the first terrace, stared at by the crowd as if they were wild beasts.

"Oh, Mattie," Jennie faltered. "We didn\'t expect to meet these people. What shall we do?"

"Stand by your colors now. There\'s nothing else to do."

On they marched, hearts thumping painfully with conscious humiliation at their silly bravado. Fine, noble-looking, quiet fellows those officers in blue—refinement and gentlemanly bearing in every movement of their stalwart bodies. They had come ashore as friendly sightseers and stood admiring the beauty of the quaint old town. Jennie\'s eyes filled with tears of vexation.

"Let\'s go home, Mattie—"

"I say so, too—"

"Never again for me! I\'ll hang my flag on the mantel. I\'ll not try to wave it in the face of a gentleman again—oof—what silly fools we were!"

The Federal commander of the fleet had warned the citizens of Baton Rouge that any hostile demonstration against his ships or men would mean the instant bombardment of the town.

Jennie had just finished breakfast and helped her grandmother to find her way to the rocker. Mandy had been sent to the store for some thread with which to make a new uniform for one of the boys. Jennie resolved to turn her energies to practical account now. No more flaunting of tiny flags in the faces of brave, dignified young officers of the navy.

The maid rushed through the hall wild with excitement. She had run every step back from the store without the thread.

"Lowdy, Miss Jennie," she gasped, "sumfin\' awful happened!"

"What is it? What\'s the matter?"

Mandy stood in dumb terror, the whites of her eyes shining. She was listening apparently for the arch-angel\'s trumpet to sound.

Jennie seized her shoulders.

"What\'s the matter? Tell me before I murder you!"

"Yassam!" Mandy gasped and again her head was cocked to one side as if straining her ears for the dreaded sound of Gabriel.

"What\'s happened?—Tell me!" Jennie stormed.

At last poor Mandy\'s senses slowly returned. She stared into her young mistress\' face and gasped:

"Yassam—Mr. Castle\'s killed a Yankee ossifer on de ship an\' dey gwine ter shell—"

"Boom!"

The deep thunder peal of a great gun shook the world. There was no mistaking the sound of it or its meaning. The fleet had opened fire on the defenseless town. Mandy\'s teeth chattered and her voice failed.

And then pandemonium.

Poor old negroes and helpless pickaninnies swarmed into the house for shelter from the doom of Judgment Day.

"Run—run for your lives—get out of the way of those shells!" Jennie shouted.

Her three terror-stricken maids huddled by her side in helpless panic.

Her grandmother sprang to her feet and asked in subdued tones:

"What is it, child?"

"The fleet\'s shelling the town—grandma—you\'ll be killed—the house\'ll be smashed—you must run—run for your life—"

Jennie screamed her warning into the sweet old lady\'s ears and seized her by the hand.

"But they can\'t shell a town full of helpless women and children, my dear," the grandmother protested gently. "It\'s impossible—"

"Boom—boom!" pealed two guns in quick succession.

"De Lawd save us!" Lucy screamed.

"You see they\'re doing it—come—"

Jennie grasped her grandmother\'s hand firmly and dragged her from the house. From the servants\' quarters came one long wail of prayer and lamentation mingled with shouts and exhortation. An old bed-ridden black woman, a fervent Methodist, raised a hymn:

"Better days are coming, we\'ll all go right!"

Jennie had reached the gate when she suddenly remembered her canary—a present Billy had given her on her eighteenth birthday. She rushed back into the house, snatched the cage up and started on the run again.

What was the use? It was impossible to take the bird. He would starve to death.

She quickly opened the cage, took him out and kissed his yellow head.

"Good-by, Jimmy darling!"

The tears would come in spite of all she could do.

"I hope you\'ll be happy!"

With quick decision she tossed him in the air.

The bird gave one helpless chirp of surprise and terror at the strange new world, fluttered in a circle, spread his wings at last and was gone.

The girl brushed her tears away and returned to her grandmother\'s side. The gravel was cutting her feet. Her shoes were utterly unfit for running. She would rush back and get a pair of the boys\' strong ones. She had worn them before.

"Wait, grandma!" she shouted. "I must change my shoes!"

Back into the house she plunged and found the shoes. Seeing the house still standing, she thought of other things she might need, grasped her tooth brushes and thrust them in her corset. She would certainly need a comb. She added that—a powder bag and lace collar lying on the bureau were also saved. Her hair was tumbling down. She thought of hair-pins and tucking comb and added them.

Her grandmother in alarm came back to find her. They decided between them to fill a pillow case with little things they would certainly need.

There was a lull in the shelling. Jennie\'s maids rushed back in terror at being left alone.

The guns again opened with redoubled fury. Still bent on saving something Jennie grabbed two soiled underskirts and an old cloak and once more dragged her grandmother to the door.

Five big shells sailed squarely over the house at the same moment. They seemed to swing in circles, spiral-shaped like corkscrews. The dull whiz and swish of their flight made the most blood-curdling unearthly noise. Her grandmother fumbled at the door trying to turn the bolt of the unused lock.

"Don\'t fool with that door, grandma!" Jennie cried—"run—run—you\'ll be killed."

"I won\'t run!" the old lady said with firm decision. "I\'ll go down there and tell those cowards what I think of their firing on women and children—"

A big shell whizzed past the house and grandma jumped behind a pillar. She was painfully deaf to human speech—but the whiz of that shell found her nerves. They ran now without looking back—ran at least for a hundred yards until the poor old lady could run no more and then walked as rapidly as possible.

They were at last on the main country road, leading out of town. Hurrying terror-stricken people, young, old, black and white, were passing them every moment now.

A mile and a half out her grandmother broke down completely. A gentleman passing in a buggy took pity on her gray hairs and lifted her to the seat by his side while his own little ones crouched at her feet.

Jennie waved her hand as they drove off:

"I\'ll find you somewhere, grandma dear—don\'t worry!"

Another mile she trudged with Mandy and Lucy clinging to her skirts and then sat down to rest. Her nerves were slowly recovering their poise and she began to laugh at the funny sights the terror-stricken people presented at every turn.

A cart approached piled high with household goods.

"Let\'s ride, Mandy!" Jennie cried.

"Yassam, dat\'s what I says, too," the little black maid eagerly agreed.

The cart belonged to a neighbor. It was driven by an old negro man.

"Let us ride, uncle!" Jennie called.

The old man pulled his reins quickly and laughed good-naturedly.

"Dat you shall, Honey. De name er Gawd, ter see Miss Jennie Barton settin\' here in dis dirty road!"

He helped them climb to seats on the top of his load. Jennie found a berth between a flour barrel and mattress, while Mandy sat astride of an enormous bundle of bed clothes. Lucy scrambled up beside the driver.

The hot sun was pouring its fierce rays down without mercy. The old negro pulled a faded umbrella from beneath his seat, raised it, and handed it to Jennie with a grand bow.

"Thank you, uncle. You certainly are good to us!"

"Yassam—yassam—I wish I could do mo\', honey chile. De ve\'y idee er dem slue-footed Yankees er shellin\' our town an\' scerin\' all our ladies ter death. Dey gwine ter pay fur all dis \'fore dey git through."

Three miles out they began to overtake the main body of the fugitives who escaped at the first mad rush. Hundreds of bedraggled women and children were toiling along the dust-covered road in the blistering sun, some bareheaded, some with hats on, some with street clothes, others with their morning wrappers just as they had fled from their unfinished breakfast.

Little girls of eight and ten and twelve were wandering along through the suffocating dust alone.

Jennie called to one she knew:

"Where\'s your mother, child?"

The girl shook her dust-powdered head.

"I don\'t know, m\'am."

"Where are you going?"

"To walk on till I find her."

Her mother was wandering with distracted cries among the crowds a mile in the rear looking for a nursing baby she had lost in the excitement.

Jennie\'s eyes kindled at the sight of faithful negroes everywhere lugging the treasures of their mistresses. She began asking them what they were carrying just to hear the answer that always came with a touch of loyal pride.

"Dese is my missy\'s clothes! I sho weren\'t gwine let dem Yankees steal dem!"

"Didn\'t you save any of your own things?"

"Didn\'t have time ter git mine!"

They came to a guerilla camp. Men and horses were resting on either side of the road. Some of them were carrying water to their horses or to the women who cooked about their camp fires. The scene looked like a monster barbecue. These irregular troops of the South were friends in time of need to-day.

They crowded the road, asking for news and commenting freely on the shelling of the city.

A rough-looking fellow pushed his way to Jennie\'s cart.

"When did they begin firin\'?"

"Just after breakfast."

Yesterday she would have resented the familiar tones in which this uncouth illiterate countryman spoke without the formality of an introduction. In this hour of common peril he was a Knight entering the lists wearing her colors.

He didn\'t mince words in expressing his opinions.

"It\'s your own fault if you\'ve saved nothing. The people in Baton Rouge must have been damned fools not to know trouble wuz comin\' with them gunboats lyin\' thar with their big-mouthed cannon gapin\' right into the streets. If the men had had any sense women wouldn\'t a been drove into the woods like this—"

"But they had no warning. They began to shell us without a minute\'s notice—"

His rough fist closed and his heavy jaw came together with a grinding sound.

"Waal, you\'re ruined—so am I—and my brothers and all our people, too. There\'s nothin\' left now except to die—and I\'ll do it!"

The girl clapped her hands.

"I wish I could go with you!"

He turned back toward his camp fire with a shake of his unkempt head.

"Die fighting for us!" Jennie cried.

He waved his black powder-stained hand:

"That I will, little girl!"

The rough figure rose in the unconscious dignity with which he waved his arm and pledged his word to fight to the death. War had leveled all ranks.

The talk on the road was all of burning homes, buildings demolished, famine, murder, and death.

Jennie suddenly found herself singing a lot of Methodist Camp Meeting hymns with an utterly foolish happiness surging through her heart.

She led off with "Better days are coming." Mandy was still too scared to sing the chorus of this first hymn but she joined softly in the next. It was one of her favorites:

"I hope to die shoutin\'—the Lord will provide."

The old man driving the cart kept time with a strange undertone of interpolation all his own. The one he loved best he repeated again and again.

"I\'m a runnin\'—a runnin\' up ter glory!"

How could she be happy amid a scene of such desolation and suffering? She tried to reproach herself and somehow couldn\'t be sorry. A vision of something more wonderful than houses and land, goods and chattels, slaves and systems of government, had made her heart beat with sudden joy and her eyes sparkle with happiness. It was only the picture of a dark slender young fellow who had never spoken a word of love that flashed before her. And yet the vision had wrought a spell that transformed the world.

The guns no longer echoed behind them. A courier came dashing from the city at sunset asking the people to return to their homes.

Two old men had rowed out to the war ships during the bombardment. They called to the commander of the flagship as they pushed their skiff alongside:

"There are no men in town, sir—you\'re only killing women and children!"

The commander leaned over the rail of his gunboat.

"I\'m sorry, gentlemen. I thought, of course, your town had been evacuated before your men were fools enough to fire on my marines. I\'ve shelled your streets to intimidate them."

The firing ceased. The order to shell the city had been caused by four guerillas firing on a yawl which was about to land without a flag of truce. Their volley killed and wounded three.

"These four men," shouted the elders from the skiff, "were the only soldiers in town!"
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