Voice. "I hope I ain't troubled you too much, Ma'm."

His convalescence was a long one and he lay quietly looking out of

the window at the magnolias and causing very little trouble to

anyone. Carreen liked him because of his placid and unembarrassed

silences. She would sit beside him through the long hot

afternoons, fanning him and saying nothing.

Carreen had very little to say these days as she moved, delicate

and wraithlike, about the tasks which were within her strength.

She prayed a good deal, for when Scarlett came into her room

without knocking, she always found her on her knees by her bed.

The sight never failed to annoy her, for Scarlett felt that the

time for prayer had passed. If God had seen fit to punish them so,

then God could very well do without prayers. Religion had always

been a bargaining process with Scarlett. She promised God good

behavior in exchange for favors. God had broken the bargain time

and again, to her way of thinking, and she felt that she owed Him

nothing at all now. And whenever she found Carreen on her knees

when she should have been taking an afternoon nap or doing the

mending, she felt that Carreen was shirking her share of the

burdens.

She said as much to Will Benteen one afternoon when he was able to

sit up in a chair and was startled when he said in his flat voice:

"Let her be, Miss Scarlett. It comforts her."

"Comforts her?"

"Yes, she's prayin' for your ma and him."

"Who is 'him'?"

His faded blue eyes looked at her from under sandy lashes without

surprise. Nothing seemed to surprise or excite him. Perhaps he

had seen too much of the unexpected ever to be startled again.

That Scarlett did not know what was in her sister's heart did not

seem odd to him. He took it as naturally as he did the fact that

Carreen had found comfort in talking to him, a stranger.

"Her beau, that boy Brent something-or-other who was killed at

Gettysburg."

"Her beau?" said Scarlett shortly. "Her beau, nothing! He and his

brother were my beaux."

"Yes, so she told me. Looks like most of the County was your

beaux. But, all the same, he was her beau after you turned him

down, because when he come home on his last furlough they got

engaged. She said he was the only boy she'd ever cared about and

so it kind of comforts her to pray for him."

"Well, fiddle-dee-dee!" said Scarlett, a very small dart of

jealousy entering her.

She looked curiously at this lanky man with his bony stooped

shoulders, his pinkish hair and calm unwavering eyes. So he knew

things about her own family which she had not troubled to discover.

So that was why Carreen mooned about, praying all the time. Well,

she'd get over it. Lots of girls got over dead sweethearts, yes,

dead husbands, too. She'd certainly gotten over Charles. And she

knew one girl in Atlanta who had been widowed three times by the

war and was still able to take notice of men. She said as much to

Will but he shook his head.

"Not Miss Carreen," he said with finality.

Will was pleasant to talk to because he had so little to say and

yet was so understanding a listener. She told him about her

problems of weeding and hoeing and planting, of fattening the hogs

and breeding the cow, and he gave good advice for he had owned a

small farm in south Georgia and two negroes. He knew his slaves

were free now and the farm gone to weeds and seedling pines. His

sister, his only relative, had moved to Texas with her husband

years ago and he was alone in the world. Yet, none of these things

seemed to bother him any more than the leg he had left in Virginia.

Yes, Will was a comfort to Scarlett after hard days when the

negroes muttered and Suellen nagged and cried and Gerald asked too

frequently where Ellen was. She could tell Will anything. She

even told him of killing the Yankee and glowed with pride when he

commented briefly: "Good work!"

Eventually all the family found their way to Will's room to air

their troubles--even Mammy, who had at first been distant with him

because he was not quality and had owned only two slaves.

When he was able to totter about the house, he turned his hands to

weaving baskets of split oak and mending the furniture ruined by

the Yankees. He was clever at whittling and Wade was constantly by

his side, for he whittled out toys for him, the only toys the

little boy had. With Will in the house, everyone felt safe in

leaving Wade and the two babies while they went about their tasks,

for he could care for them as deftly as Mammy and only Melly

surpassed him at soothing the screaming black and white babies.

"You've been mighty good to me, Miss Scarlett," he said, "and me a

stranger and nothin' to you all. I've caused you a heap of trouble

and worry and if it's all the same to you, I'm goin' to stay here

and help you all with the work till I've paid you back some for

your trouble. I can't ever pay it all, 'cause there ain't no

payment a man can give for his life."

So he stayed and, gradually, unobtrusively, a large part of the

burden of Tara shifted from Scarlett's shoulders to the bony

shoulders of Will Benteen.