introduction. In this hour of common peril he was a Knight entering the
lists wearing her colors.

He didn't mince words in expressing his opinions.

"It's your own fault if you've saved nothing. The people in Baton Rouge
must have been damned fools not to know trouble wuz comin' with them
gunboats lyin' thar with their big-mouthed cannon gapin' right into the
streets. If the men had had any sense women wouldn't a been drove into
the woods like this--"

"But they had no warning. They began to shell us without a minute's
notice--"

His rough fist closed and his heavy jaw came together with a grinding
sound.

"Waal, you're ruined--so am I--and my brothers and all our people, too.
There's nothin' left now except to die--and I'll do it!"

The girl clapped her hands.

"I wish I could go with you!"

He turned back toward his camp fire with a shake of his unkempt head.

"Die fighting for us!" Jennie cried.

He waved his black powder-stained hand:

"That I will, little girl!"

The rough figure rose in the unconscious dignity with which he waved his
arm and pledged his word to fight to the death. War had leveled all
ranks.

The talk on the road was all of burning homes, buildings demolished,
famine, murder, and death.

Jennie suddenly found herself singing a lot of Methodist Camp Meeting
hymns with an utterly foolish happiness surging through her heart.

She led off with "_Better days are coming._" Mandy was still too scared
to sing the chorus of this first hymn but she joined softly in the next.
It was one of her favorites:

"_I hope to die shoutin'--the Lord will provide._"

The old man driving the cart kept time with a strange undertone of
interpolation all his own. The one he loved best he repeated again and
again.

"I'm a runnin'--a runnin' up ter glory!"

How could she be happy amid a scene of such desolation and suffering?
She tried to reproach herself and somehow couldn't be sorry. A vision of
something more wonderful than houses and land, goods and chattels,
slaves and systems of government, had made her heart beat with sudden
joy and her eyes sparkle with happiness. It was only the picture of a
dark slender young fellow who had never spoken a word of love that
flashed before her. And yet the vision had wrought a spell that
transformed the world.

The guns no longer echoed behind them. A courier came dashing from the
city at sunset asking the people to return to their homes.

Two old men h