In response to Ellen's letters, pleading with her to come home, she

wrote minimizing the dangers of the siege, explaining Melanie's

predicament and promising to come as soon as the baby was born.

Ellen, sensitive to the bonds of kin, be they blood or marriage,

wrote back reluctantly agreeing that she must stay but demanding

Wade and Prissy be sent home immediately. This suggestion met with

the complete approval of Prissy, who was now reduced to teeth-

chattering idiocy at every unexpected sound. She spent so much

time crouching in the cellar that the girls would have fared badly

but for Mrs. Meade's stolid old Betsy.

Scarlett was as anxious as her mother to have Wade out of Atlanta,

not only for the child's safety, but because his constant fear

Irritated her. Wade was terrified to speechlessness by the

shelling, and even when lulls came he clung to Scarlett's skirts,

too terrified to cry. He was afraid to go to bed at night, afraid

of the dark, afraid to sleep lest the Yankees should come and get

him, and the sound of his soft nervous whimpering in the night

grated unendurably on her nerves. Secretly she was just as

frightened as he was, but it angered her to be reminded of it every

minute by his tense, drawn face. Yes, Tara was the place for Wade.

Prissy should take him there and return immediately to be present

when the baby came.

But before Scarlett could start the two on their homeward journey,

news came that the Yankees had swung to the south and were

skirmishing along the railroad between Atlanta and Jonesboro.

Suppose the Yankees should capture the train on which Wade and

Prissy were riding--Scarlett and Melanie turned pale at the

thought, for everyone knew that Yankee atrocities on helpless

children were even more dreadful than on women. So she feared to

send him home and he remained in Atlanta, a frightened, silent

little ghost, pattering about desperately after his mother, fearing

to have her skirt out of his hand for even a minute.

The siege went on through the hot days of July, thundering days

following nights of sullen, ominous stillness, and the town began

to adjust itself. It was as though, the worst having happened,

they had nothing more to fear. They had feared a siege and now

they had a siege and, after all, it wasn't so bad. Life could and

did go on almost as usual. They knew they were sitting on a

Volcano, but until that volcano erupted there was nothing they

could do. So why worry now? And probably it wouldn't erupt

anyway. Just look how General Hood is holding the Yankees out of

the city! And see how the cavalry is holding the railroad to

Macon! Sherman will never take it!

But for all their apparent insouciance in the face of falling

shells and shorter rations, for all their ignoring the Yankees,

barely half a mile away, and for all their boundless confidence in

the ragged line of gray men in the rifle pits, there pulsed, just

below the skin of Atlanta, a wild uncertainty over what the next

day would bring. Suspense, worry, sorrow, hunger and the torment

of rising, falling, rising hope was wearing that skin thin.

Gradually, Scarlett drew courage from the brave faces of her

friends and from the merciful adjustment which nature makes when

what cannot be cured must be endured. To be sure, she still jumped

at the sound of explosions but she did not run screaming to burrow

her head under Melanie's pillow. She could now gulp and say

weakly: "That was close, wasn't it?"

She was less frightened also because life had taken on the quality

of a dream, a dream too terrible to be real. It wasn't possible

that she, Scarlett O'Hara, should be in such a predicament, with

the danger of death about her every hour, every minute. It wasn't

possible that the quiet tenor of life could have changed so

completely in so short a time.