I do? Where shall I turn? Isn't there anybody in the world who

can help me?" Where had all the security of the world gone? Why

wasn't there someone, some strong wise person to take the burdens

from her? She wasn't made to carry them. She did not know how to

carry them. And then she fell into an uneasy doze.

She was in a wild strange country so thick with swirling mist she

could not see her hand before her face. The earth beneath her feet

was uneasy. It was a haunted land, still with a terrible

stillness, and she was lost in it, lost and terrified as a child in

the night. She was bitterly cold and hungry and so fearful of what

lurked in the mists about her that she tried to scream and could

not. There were things in the fog reaching out fingers to pluck at

her skirt, to drag her down into the uneasy quaking earth on which

she stood, silent, relentless, spectral hands. Then, she knew that

somewhere in the opaque gloom about her there was shelter, help, a

haven of refuge and warmth. But where was it? Could she reach it

before the hands clutched her and dragged her down into the

quicksands?

Suddenly she was running, running through the mist like a mad

thing, crying and screaming, throwing out her arms to clutch only

empty air and wet mist. Where was the haven? It eluded her but it

was there, hidden, somewhere. If she could only reach it! If she

could only reach it she would be safe! But terror was weakening

her legs, hunger making her faint. She gave one despairing cry and

awoke to find Melanie's worried face above her and Melanie's hand

shaking her to wakefulness.

The dream returned again and again, whenever she went to sleep with

an empty stomach. And that was frequently enough. It so

frightened her that she feared to sleep, although she feverishly

told herself there was nothing in such a dream to be afraid of.

There was nothing in a dream about fog to scare her so. Nothing at

all--yet the thought of dropping off into that mist-filled country

so terrified her she began sleeping with Melanie, who would wake

her up when her moaning and twitching revealed that she was again

in the clutch of the dream.

Under the strain she grew white and thin. The pretty roundness

left her face, throwing her cheek bones into prominence,

emphasizing her slanting green eyes and giving her the look of a

prowling, hungry cat.

"Daytime is enough like a nightmare without my dreaming things,"

she thought desperately and began hoarding her daily ration to eat

it just before she went to sleep.

At Christmas time Frank Kennedy and a small troop from the

commissary department jogged up to Tara on a futile hunt for grain

and animals for the army. They were a ragged and ruffianly

appearing crew, mounted on lame and heaving horses which obviously

were in too bad condition to be used for more active service. Like

their animals the men had been invalided out of the front-line

forces and, except for Frank, all of them had an arm missing or an

eye gone or stiffened joints. Most of them wore blue overcoats of

captured Yankees and, for a brief instant of horror, those at Tara

thought Sherman's men had returned.

They stayed the night on the plantation, sleeping on the floor in

the parlor, luxuriating as they stretched themselves on the velvet

rug, for it had been weeks since they had slept under a roof or on

anything softer than pine needles and hard earth. For all their

dirty beards and tatters they were a well-bred crowd, full of

pleasant small talk, jokes and compliments and very glad to be

spending Christmas Eve in a big house, surrounded by pretty women

as they had been accustomed to do in days long past. They refused

to be serious about the war, told outrageous lies to make the girls

laugh and brought to the bare and looted house the first lightness,

the first hint of festivity it had known in many a day.

"It's almost like the old days when we had house parties, isn't