It helps me. Every time I give some poor man my share I think that

maybe, somewhere on the road up north, some woman is giving my

Ashley a share of her dinner and it's helping him to get home to

me!"

"My Ashley."

"Beloved, I am coming home to you."

Scarlett turned away, wordless. After that, Melanie noticed there

was more food on the table when guests were present, even though

Scarlett might grudge them every mouthful.

When the soldiers were too ill to go on, and there were many such,

Scarlett put them to bed with none too good grace. Each sick man

meant another mouth to feed. Someone had to nurse him and that

meant one less worker at the business of fence building, hoeing,

weeding and plowing. One boy, on whose face a blond fuzz had just

begun to sprout, was dumped on the front porch by a mounted soldier

bound for Fayetteville. He had found him unconscious by the

roadside and had brought him, across his saddle, to Tara, the

nearest house. The girls thought he must be one of the little

cadets who had been called out of military school when Sherman

approached Milledgeville but they never knew, for he died without

regaining consciousness and a search of his pockets yielded no

Information.

A nice-looking boy, obviously a gentleman, and somewhere to the

south, some woman was watching the roads, wondering where he was

and when he was coming home, just as she and Melanie, with a wild

hope in their hearts, watched every bearded figure that came up

their walk. They buried the cadet in the family burying ground,

next to the three little O'Hara boys, and Melanie cried sharply as

Pork filled in the grave, wondering in her heart if strangers were

doing this same thing to the tall body of Ashley.

Will Benteen was another soldier, like the nameless boy, who

arrived unconscious across the saddle of a comrade. Will was

acutely ill with pneumonia and when the girls put him to bed, they

feared he would soon join the boy in the burying ground.

He had the sallow malarial face of the south Georgia Cracker, pale

pinkish hair and washed-out blue eyes which even in delirium were

patient and mild. One of his legs was gone at the knee and to the

stump was fitted a roughly whittled wooden peg. He was obviously a

Cracker, just as the boy they had buried so short a while ago was

obviously a planter's son. Just how the girls knew this they could

not say. Certainly Will was no dirtier, no more hairy, no more

lice infested than many fine gentlemen who came to Tara. Certainly

the language he used in his delirium was no less grammatical than

that of the Tarleton twins. But they knew instinctively, as they

knew thoroughbred horses from scrubs, that he was not of their

class. But this knowledge did not keep them from laboring to save

him.

Emaciated from a year in a Yankee prison, exhausted by his long

tramp on his ill-fitting wooden peg, he had little strength to

combat pneumonia and for days he lay in the bed moaning, trying to

get up, fighting battles over again. Never once did he call for

mother, wife, sister or sweetheart and this omission worried

Carreen.

"A man ought to have some folks," she said. "And he sounds like he

didn't have a soul in the world."

For all his lankiness he was tough, and good nursing pulled him

through. The day came when his pale blue eyes, perfectly cognizant

of his surroundings, fell upon Carreen sitting beside him, telling

her rosary beads, the morning sun shining through her fair hair.

"Then you warn't a dream, after all," he said, in his flat toneless