It fer some ice ter put on mah gals' haids.'

"She wouldn't let Mist' Gerald come in hyah, nor Rosa nor Teena,

nobody but me, kase Ah done had de typhoy. An' den it tuck her,

Miss Scarlett, an' Ah seed right off dat 'twarnt no use."

Mammy straightened up and, raising her apron, dried her streaming

eyes.

"She went fas', Miss Scarlett, an' even dat nice Yankee doctah

couldn' do nuthin' fer her. She din' know nuthin' a-tall. Ah call

ter her an' talk ter her but she din' even know her own Mammy."

"Did she--did she ever mention me--call for me?"

"No, honey. She think she is lil gal back in Savannah. She din'

call nobody by name."

Dilcey stirred and laid the sleeping baby across her knees.

"Yes'm, she did. She did call somebody."

"You hesh yo' mouf, you Injun-nigger!" Mammy turned with

threatening violence on Dilcey.

"Hush, Mammy! Who did she call, Dilcey? Pa?"

"No'm. Not yo' pa. It wuz the night the cotton buhnt--"

"Has the cotton gone--tell me quickly!"

"Yes'm, it buhnt up. The sojers rolls it out of the shed into the

back yard and hollers, 'Here the bigges' bonfiah in Georgia,' and

tech it off."

Three years of stored cotton--one hundred and fifty thousand

dollars, all in one blaze!

"And the fiah light up the place lak it wuz day--we wuz scared the

house would buhn, too, and it wuz so bright in this hyah room that

you could mos' pick a needle offen the flo'. And w'en the light

shine in the winder, it look lak it wake Miss Ellen up and she set

right up in bed and cry out loud, time and again: 'Feeleep!

Feeleep!' I ain' never heerd no sech name but it wuz a name and

she wuz callin' him."

Mammy stood as though turned to stone glaring at Dilcey but

Scarlett dropped her head into her hands. Philippe--who was he and

what had he been to Mother that she died calling him?

The long road from Atlanta to Tara had ended, ended in a blank

wall, the road that was to end in Ellen's arms. Never again could

Scarlett lie down, as a child, secure beneath her father's roof

with the protection of her mother's love wrapped about her like an

eiderdown quilt. There was no security or haven to which she could

turn now. No turning or twisting would avoid this dead end to

which she had come. There was no one on whose shoulders she could

rest her burdens. Her father was old and stunned, her sisters ill,

Melanie frail and weak, the children helpless, and the negroes

looking up to her with childlike faith, clinging to her skirts,

knowing that Ellen's daughter would be the refuge Ellen had always

been.

Through the window, in the faint light of the rising moon, Tara

stretched before her, negroes gone, acres desolate, barns ruined,

like a body bleeding under her eyes, like her own body, slowly

bleeding. This was the end of the road, quivering old age,

sickness, hungry mouths, helpless hands plucking at her skirts.

And at the end of this road, there was nothing--nothing but

Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton, nineteen years old, a widow with a little

child.

What would she do with all of this? Aunt Pitty and the Burrs in

Macon could take Melanie and her baby. If the girls recovered,

Ellen's family would have to take them, whether they liked it or

not. And she and Gerald could turn to Uncle James and Andrew.

She looked at the thin forms, tossing before her, the sheets about

them moist and dark from dripping water. She did not like Suellen.

She saw it now with a sudden clarity. She had never liked her.

She did not especially love Carreen--she could not love anyone who

was weak. But they were of her blood, part of Tara. No, she could

not let them live out their lives in their aunts' homes as poor

relations. An O'Hara a poor relation, living on charity bread and

sufferance! Oh, never that!

Was there no escape from this dead end? Her tired brain moved so

slowly. She raised her hands to her head as wearily as if the air

were water against which her arms struggled. She took the gourd

from between the glass and bottle and looked in it. There was some

whisky left in the bottom, how much she could not tell in the

uncertain light. Strange that the sharp smell did not offend her

nostrils now. She drank slowly but this time the liquid did not

burn, only a dull warmth followed.

She set down the empty gourd and looked about her. This was all a

dream, this smoke-filled dim room, the scrawny girls, Mammy

shapeless and huge crouching beside the bed, Dilcey a still bronze