Illinois. In their first joy, they could think of nothing except

that he was alive. But, when calmness began to return, they looked

at one another and said "Rock Island!" in the same voice they would

have said "In Hell!" For even as Andersonville was a name that

stank in the North, so was Rock Island one to bring terror to the

heart of any Southerner who had relatives imprisoned there.

When Lincoln refused to exchange prisoners, believing it would

hasten the end of the war to burden the Confederacy with the

feeding and guarding of Union prisoners, there were thousands of

bluecoats at Andersonville, Georgia. The Confederates were on

scant rations and practically without drugs or bandages for their

own sick and wounded. They had little to share with the prisoners.

They fed their prisoners on what the soldiers in the field were

eating, fat pork and dried peas, and on this diet the Yankees died

like flies, sometimes a hundred a day. Inflamed by the reports,

the North resorted to harsher treatment of Confederate prisoners

and at no place were conditions worse than at Rock Island. Food

was scanty, one blanket for three men, and the ravages of smallpox,

pneumonia and typhoid gave the place the name of a pest-house.

Three-fourths of all the men sent there never came out alive.

And Ashley was in that horrible place! Ashley was alive but he was

wounded and at Rock Island, and the snow must have been deep in

Illinois when he was taken there. Had he died of his wound, since

Rhett had learned his news? Had he fallen victim to smallpox? Was

he delirious with pneumonia and no blanket to cover him?

"Oh, Captain Butler, isn't there some way-- Can't you use your

influence and have him exchanged?" cried Melanie.

"Mr. Lincoln, the merciful and just, who cries large tears over

Mrs. Bixby's five boys, hasn't any tears to shed about the

thousands of Yankees dying at Andersonville," said Rhett, his mouth

twisting. "He doesn't care if they all die. The order is out. No

exchanges. I--I hadn't told you before, Mrs. Wilkes, but your

husband had a chance to get out and refused it."

"Oh, no!" cried Melanie in disbelief.

"Yes, indeed. The Yankees are recruiting men for frontier service

to fight the Indians, recruiting them from among Confederate

prisoners. Any prisoner who will take the oath of allegiance and

enlist for Indian service for two years will be released and sent

West. Mr. Wilkes refused."

"Oh, how could he?" cried Scarlett. "Why didn't he take the oath

and then desert and come home as soon as he got out of jail?"

Melanie turned on her like a small fury.

"How can you even suggest that he would do such a thing? Betray

his own Confederacy by taking that vile oath and then betray his

word to the Yankees! I would rather know he was dead at Rock

Island than hear he had taken that oath. I'd be proud of him if he

died in prison. But if he did THAT, I would never look on his face

again. Never! Of course, he refused."

When Scarlett was seeing Rhett to the door, she asked indignantly:

"If it were you, wouldn't you enlist with the Yankees to keep from

dying in that place and then desert?"

"Of course," said Rhett, his teeth showing beneath his mustache.

"Then why didn't Ashley do it?"

"He's a gentleman," said Rhett, and Scarlett wondered how it was

possible to convey such cynicism and contempt in that one honorable

word.

Part Three

CHAPTER XVII

May of 1864 came--a hot dry May that wilted the flowers in the

buds--and the Yankees under General Sherman were in Georgia again,

above Dalton, one hundred miles northwest of Atlanta. Rumor had it

that there would be heavy fighting up there near the boundary

between Georgia and Tennessee. The Yankees were massing for an

attack on the Western and Atlantic Railroad, the line which

connected Atlanta with Tennessee and the West, the same line over

which the Southern troops had been rushed last fall to win the

victory at Chickamauga.

But, for the most part, Atlanta was not disturbed by the prospect

of fighting near Dalton. The place where the Yankees were

concentrating was only a few miles southeast of the battle field of

Chickamauga. They had been driven back once when they had tried to

break through the mountain passes of that region, and they would be

driven back again.

Atlanta--and all of Georgia--knew that the state was far too

important to the Confederacy for General Joe Johnston to let the

Yankees remain inside the state's borders for long. Old Joe and

his army would not let even one Yankee get south of Dalton, for too

much depended on the undisturbed functioning of Georgia. The

unravaged state was a vast granary, machine shop and storehouse for

the Confederacy. It manufactured much of the powder and arms used

by the army and most of the cotton and woolen goods. Lying between

Atlanta and Dalton was the city of Rome with its cannon foundry and

its other industries, and Etowah and Allatoona with the largest

ironworks south of Richmond. And, in Atlanta, were not only the

factories for making pistols and saddles, tents and ammunition, but

also the most extensive rolling mills in the South, the shops of

the principal railroads and the enormous hospitals. And in Atlanta

was the junction of the four railroads on which the very life of

the Confederacy depended.

So no one worried particularly. After all, Dalton was a long way

off, up near the Tennessee line. There had been fighting in

Tennessee for three years and people were accustomed to the thought

of that state as a far-away battle field, almost as far away as

Virginia or the Mississippi River. Moreover, Old Joe and his men

were between the Yankees and Atlanta, and everyone knew that, next

to General Lee himself, there was no greater general than Johnston,

now that Stonewall Jackson was dead.

Dr. Meade summed up the civilian point of view on the matter, one

warm May evening on the veranda of Aunt Pitty's house, when he said

that Atlanta had nothing to fear, for General Johnston was standing

in the mountains like an iron rampart. His audience heard him with

varying emotions, for all who sat there rocking quietly in the

fading twilight, watching the first fireflies of the season moving

magically through the dusk, had weighty matters on their minds.

Mrs. Meade, her hand upon Phil's arm, was hoping the doctor was

right. If the war came closer, she knew that Phil would have to

go. He was sixteen now and in the Home Guard. Fanny Elsing, pale

and hollow eyed since Gettysburg, was trying to keep her mind from

the torturing picture which had worn a groove in her tired mind

these past several months--Lieutenant Dallas McLure dying in a

jolting ox cart in the rain on the long, terrible retreat into

Maryland.

Captain Carey Ashburn's useless arm was hurting him again and

moreover he was depressed by the thought that his courtship of

Scarlett was at a standstill. That had been the situation ever

since the news of Ashley Wilkes' capture, though the connection

between the two events did not occur to him. Scarlett and Melanie

both were thinking of Ashley, as they always did when urgent tasks

or the necessity of carrying on a conversation did not divert them.

Scarlett was thinking bitterly, sorrowfully: He must be dead or

else we would have heard. Melanie, stemming the tide of fear again

and again, through endless hours, was telling herself: "He can't

be dead. I'd know it--I'd feel it if he were dead." Rhett Butler

lounged in the shadows, his long legs in their elegant boots

crossed negligently, his dark face an unreadable blank. In his

arms Wade slept contentedly, a cleanly picked wishbone in his small

hand. Scarlett always permitted Wade to sit up late when Rhett

called because the shy child was fond of him, and Rhett oddly

enough seemed to be fond of Wade. Generally Scarlett was annoyed

by the child's presence, but he always behaved nicely in Rhett's

arms. As for Aunt Pitty, she was nervously trying to stifle a

belch, for the rooster they had had for supper was a tough old

bird.

That morning Aunt Pitty had reached the regretful decision that she

had better kill the patriarch before he died of old age and pining

for his harem which had long since been eaten. For days he had

drooped about the empty chicken run, too dispirited to crow. After

Uncle Peter had wrung his neck, Aunt Pitty had been beset by

conscience at the thought of enjoying him, en famille, when so many

of her friends had not tasted chicken for weeks, so she suggested

company for dinner. Melanie, who was now in her fifth month, had

not been out in public or received guests for weeks, and she was

appalled at the idea. But Aunt Pitty, for once, was firm. It

would be selfish to eat the rooster alone, and if Melanie would

only move her top hoop a little higher no one would notice anything

and she was so flat in the bust anyway.

"Oh, but Auntie I don't want to see people when Ashley--"

"It isn't as if Ashley were--had passed away," said Aunt Pitty, her