Miss Sophia folded the letter. “Dear George! I am glad enough that he will get better. He was a sad tease! He used to say the strangest things. I remember one day he said that behind Amanda embroidering he always saw a million shut-in women sticking cambric needles into the eyes of the future. And he said that I had done the whole world in wax, and he wondered how it would be if we ever got before a good hot fire.—He wasn’t lacking in sense either, only it never had a chance to come out, Maria spoiling him so, and darkeys and dogs always at his heels.—No, dear Mrs. Cary, you’re a young woman, and—you’ll pardon me, I know!—a beautiful one, and I don’t think Captain Cary ought to allow it!” March went, April went, May came. On the first of May, Désirée, walking on the road, thought she observed something unusual in the air. Presently there passed cavalry, a great deal of cavalry. She leaned against a wayside tree and watched. Presently there rode an officer whom she knew. He lifted his hat, then pushed his horse upon the dusty turf beneath the tree. “We’re ordered out toward the Oostenaula! Sherman’s in motion. The volcano is about to become active.” “Is it going to overflow Dalton?” “Well, it would seem so! Though sometimes there’s a new crater. We’ll see what we’ll see. Anyhow, Cary’ll be sending you to the rear.” “I’ll fall back when the army falls back.” Edward came that night and plead with her. She could go to Kingston on the cars and thence to Rome to the westward, out of the region of danger— “Edward,” she said, “haven’t I been a good campaigner?” “The best—” “Then, when you can do a thing well, why do something else poorly? This is the way I am going to live, and when you wed me you wed my way of life.” “If harm came to you, Désirée—” “And I might say, ‘If harm came to you, Edward,’—I know that harm may come to you, but—I don’t say it, and you must not say it either. With you is my home, my Cape Jessamine, and I am not going to leave it.” “With you is my home, my Cape Jessamine—and all the gods know I love you here—” “I am not going to Rome. Let us walk a little, in the moonlight.” The next day came in from Savannah Mercer’s brigade of fourteen hundred. On the third the scouts reported a great force of the enemy at Ringgold. On this day, too, the cavalry pickets were driven in along the Cleveland road. On the fifth the great blue host formed in line of battle near Tunnel Hill. Over against them were drawn the grey. The fifth and the sixth were days of skirmishing, of reconnoissance, of putting forth fingers and drawing them back. In the first light of the seventh, under a wonderful sunrise sky, the blue army began a general advance. CHAPTER XXIII THE ROAD TO RESACA