Veterans now, veterans of brief service, but veterans just the

same, and they had acquitted themselves well. They searched out

the faces of friends in the crowd and stared at them proudly,

defiantly. They could hold up their heads now.

The old men and boys of the Home Guard marched by, the graybeards

almost too weary to lift their feet, the boys wearing the faces of

tired children, confronted too early with adult problems. Scarlett

caught sight of Phil Meade and hardly recognized him, so black was

his face with powder and grime, so taut with strain and weariness.

Uncle Henry went limping by, hatless in the rain, his head stuck

through a hole in a piece of old oilcloth. Grandpa Merriwether

rode in on a gun carriage, his bare feet tied in quilt scraps. But

search though she might, she saw no sign of John Wilkes.

Johnston's veterans, however, went by with the tireless, careless

step which had carried them for three years, and they still had the

energy to grin and wave at pretty girls and to call rude gibes to

men not in uniform. They were on their way to the entrenchments

that ringed the town--no shallow, hastily dug trenches, these, but

earthworks, breast high, reinforced with sandbags and tipped with

sharpened staves of wood. For mile after mile the trenches

encircled the town, red gashes surmounted by red mounds, waiting

for the men who would fill them.

The crowd cheered the troops as they would have cheered them in

Victory. There was fear in every heart but, now that they knew the

truth, now that the worst had happened, now that the war was in

their front yard, a change came over the town. There was no panic

now, no hysteria. Whatever lay in hearts did not show on faces.

Everyone looked cheerful even if the cheer was strained. Everyone

tried to show brave, confident faces to the troops. Everyone

repeated what Old Joe had said, just before he was relieved of

command: "I can hold Atlanta forever."

Now that Hood had had to retreat, quite a number wished, with the

soldiers, that they had Old Joe back, but they forebore saying it

and took courage from Old Joe's remark:

"I can hold Atlanta forever!"

Not for Hood the cautious tactics of General Johnston. He

assaulted the Yankees on the east, he assaulted them on the west.

Sherman was circling the town like a wrestler seeking a fresh hold

on an opponent's body, and Hood did not remain behind his rifle

pits waiting for the Yankees to attack. He went out boldly to meet

them and savagely fell upon them. Within the space of a few days

the battles of Atlanta and of Ezra Church were fought, and both of

them were major engagements which made Peachtree Creek seem like a

skirmish.

But the Yankees kept coming back for more. They had suffered heavy

losses but they could afford to lose. And all the while their

batteries poured shells into Atlanta, killing people in their

homes, ripping roofs off buildings, tearing huge craters in the

streets. The townsfolk sheltered as best they could in cellars, in

holes in the ground and in shallow tunnels dug in railroad cuts.

Atlanta was under siege.

Within eleven days after he had taken command, General Hood had

lost almost as many men as Johnston had lost in seventy-four days

of battle and retreat, and Atlanta was hemmed in on three sides.

The railroad from Atlanta to Tennessee was now in Sherman's hands

for its full length. His army was across the railroad to the east

and he had cut the railroad running southwest to Alabama. Only the

one railroad to the south, to Macon and Savannah, was still open.

The town was crowded with soldiers, swamped with wounded, jammed

with refugees, and this one line was inadequate for the crying

needs of the stricken city. But as long as this railroad could be

held, Atlanta could still stand.

Scarlett was terrified when she realized how important this line

had become, how fiercely Sherman would fight to take it, how

desperately Hood would fight to defend it. For this was the

railroad which ran through the County, through Jonesboro. And Tara

was only five miles from Jonesboro! Tara seemed like a haven of

refuge by comparison with the screaming hell of Atlanta, but Tara

was only five miles from Jonesboro!

Scarlett and many other ladies sat on the flat roofs of stores,

shaded by their tiny parasols, and watched the fighting on the day

of the battle of Atlanta. But when shells began falling in the

streets for the first time, they fled to the cellars, and that

night the exodus of women, children and old people from the city

began. Macon was their destination and many of those who took the

train that night had already refugeed five and six times before, as

Johnston fell back from Dalton. They were traveling lighter now

than when they arrived in Atlanta. Most of them carried only a

carpetbag and a scanty lunch done up in a bandana handkerchief.

Here and there, frightened servants carried silver pitchers, knives

and forks and a family portrait or two which had been salvaged in

the first fight.

Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Elsing refused to leave. They were

needed at the hospital and furthermore, they said proudly, they

weren't afraid and no Yankees were going to run them out of their

homes. But Maybelle and her baby and Fanny Elsing went to Macon.

Mrs. Meade was disobedient for the first time in her married life

and flatly refused to yield to the doctor's command that she take

the train to safety. The doctor needed her, she said. Moreover,

Phil was somewhere in the trenches and she wanted to be near by in

case . . .

But Mrs. Whiting went and many other ladies of Scarlett's circle.

Aunt Pitty, who had been the first to denounce Old Joe for his

policy of retreat, was among the first to pack her trunks. Her

nerves, she said, were delicate and she could not endure noises.

She feared she might faint at an explosion and not be able to reach

the cellar. No, she was not afraid. Her baby mouth tried to set