It was inconceivable that the bustling town they knew, so full of

people, so crowded with soldiers, was gone. All the lovely homes

beneath shady trees, all the big stores and the fine hotels--surely

they couldn't be gone! Melanie seemed ready to burst into tears,

for she had been born there and knew no other home. Scarlett's

heart sank because she had come to love the place second only to

Tara.

"Well, almost everything," Frank amended hastily, disturbed by the

expressions on their faces. He tried to look cheerful, for he did

not believe in upsetting ladies. Upset ladies always upset him and

made him feel helpless. He could not bring himself to tell them

the worst. Let them find out from some one else.

He could not tell them what the army saw when it marched back into

Atlanta, the acres and acres of chimneys standing blackly above

ashes, piles of half-burned rubbish and tumbled heaps of brick

clogging the streets, old trees dying from fire, their charred

limbs tumbling to the ground in the cold wind. He remembered how

the sight had turned him sick, remembered the bitter curses of the

Confederates when they saw the remains of the town. He hoped the

ladies would never hear of the horrors of the looted cemetery, for

they'd never get over that. Charlie Hamilton and Melanie's mother

and father were buried there. The sight of that cemetery still

gave Frank nightmares. Hoping to find jewelry buried with the

dead, the Yankee soldiers had broken open vaults, dug up graves.

They had robbed the bodies, stripped from the coffins gold and

silver name plates, silver trimmings and silver handles. The

skeletons and corpses, flung helterskelter among their splintered

caskets, lay exposed and so pitiful.

And Frank couldn't tell them about the dogs and the cats. Ladies

set such a store by pets. But the thousands of starving animals,

left homeless when their masters had been so rudely evacuated, had

shocked him almost as much as the cemetery, for Frank loved cats

and dogs. The animals had been frightened, cold, ravenous, wild as

forest creatures, the strong attacking the weak, the weak waiting

for the weaker to die so they could eat them. And, above the

ruined town, the buzzards splotched the wintry sky with graceful,

sinister bodies.

Frank cast about in his mind for some mitigating information that

would make the ladies feel better.

"There's some houses still standing," he said, "houses that set on

big lots away from other houses and didn't catch fire. And the

churches and the Masonic hall are left. And a few stores too. But

the business section and all along the railroad tracks and at Five

Points--well, ladies, that part of town is flat on the ground."

"Then," cried Scarlett bitterly, "that warehouse Charlie left me,

down on the tracks, it's gone too?"

"If it was near the tracks, it's gone, but--" Suddenly he smiled.

Why hadn't he thought of it before? "Cheer up, ladies! Your Aunt

Pitty's house is still standing. It's kind of damaged but there it

is."

"Oh, how did it escape?"

"Well, it's made of brick and it's got about the only slate roof in

Atlanta and that kept the sparks from setting it afire, I guess.

And then it's about the last house on the north end of town and the

fire wasn't so bad over that way. Of course, the Yankees quartered

there tore it up aplenty. They even burned the baseboard and the

mahogany stair rail for firewood, but shucks! It's in good shape.

When I saw Miss Pitty last week in Macon--"

"You saw her? How is she?"

"Just fine. Just fine. When I told her her house was still

standing, she made up her mind to come home right away. That is--