Voice shouted the command to break ranks. In a moment, the Home

Guard and the militia unit in their bright uniforms shook the

narrow stairs and crowded into the room, bowing, saluting, shaking

hands. There were boys in the Home Guard, proud to be playing at

war, promising themselves they would be in Virginia this time next

year, if the war would just last that long; old men with white

beards, wishing they were younger, proud to march in uniform in

the reflected glory of sons at the front. In the militia, there

were many middle-aged men and some older men but there was a fair

sprinkling of men of military age who did not carry themselves

quite so jauntily as their elders or their juniors. Already

people were beginning to whisper, asking why they were not with

Lee.

How would they all get into the hall! It had seemed such a large

place a few minutes before, and now it was packed, warm with

summer-night odors of sachet and cologne water and hair pomade and

burning bayberry candles, fragrant with flowers, faintly dusty as

many feet trod the old drill floors. The din and hubbub of voices

made it almost impossible to hear anything and, as if feeling the

joy and excitement of the occasion, old Levi choked off "Lorena"

in mid-bar, rapped sharply with his bow and, sawing away for dear

life, the orchestra burst into "Bonnie Blue Flag."

A hundred voices took it up, sang it, shouted it like a cheer.

The Home Guard bugler, climbing onto the platform, caught up with

the music just as the chorus began, and the high silver notes

soared out thrillingly above the massed singing, causing goose

bumps to break out on bare arms and cold chills of deeply felt

emotion to fly down spines:

"Hurrah! Hurrah! For the Southern Rights, hurrah!

Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag

That bears a single star!"

They crashed into the second verse and Scarlett, singing with the

rest, heard the high sweet soprano of Melanie mounting behind her,

clear and true and thrilling as the bugle notes. Turning, she saw

that Melly was standing with her hands clasped to her breast, her

eyes closed, and tiny tears oozing from the corners. She smiled

at Scarlett, whimsically, as the music ended, making a little moue

of apology as she dabbed with her handkerchief.

"I'm so happy," she whispered, "and so proud of the soldiers that

I just can't help crying about it."

There was a deep, almost fanatic glow in her eyes that for a

moment lit up her plain little face and made it beautiful.

The same look was on the faces of all the women as the song ended,

tears of pride on cheeks, pink or wrinkled, smiles on lips, a deep

hot glow in eyes, as they turned to their men, sweetheart to

lover, mother to son, wife to husband. They were all beautiful

with the blinding beauty that transfigures even the plainest woman

when she is utterly protected and utterly loved and is giving back

that love a thousandfold.

They loved their men, they believed in them, they trusted them to

the last breaths of their bodies. How could disaster ever come to

women such as they when their stalwart gray line stood between

them and the Yankees? Had there ever been such men as these since

the first dawn of the world, so heroic, so reckless, so gallant,

so tender? How could anything but overwhelming victory come to a

Cause as just and right as theirs? A Cause they loved as much as

they loved their men, a Cause they served with their hands and

their hearts, a Cause they talked about, thought about, dreamed

about--a Cause to which they would sacrifice these men if need be,

and bear their loss as proudly as the men bore their battle flags.