Hal shrugged his shoulders and half turned away. “The fact is,” he said, after a slight pause, “the Yanks are getting a little too near to suit me. We hoped to hold them at Chattanooga, but you know what happened there!” “I am going home to pack _now_!” Mrs. Stewart exclaimed, rising majestically to her feet. “Come, Corinne. We should have started for Mexico long ago.” “You’d better hear Hal’s news before you go,” Mrs. May suggested. “Yes, Aunt Cora,” Hal went on with the ghost of a smile. “You’ll have to decide on Brazil. Sherman has the jump on you.” “You mean we’re cut off?” cried Mrs. Stewart in anguish. “Oh, not entirely,” Hal answered, laughing at her exaggerated despair. “You can at least get out of Washington; but, if you’re going, I shouldn’t advise delay. Sherman isn’t one to lose time, and when he tears up a railroad he does it completely. He builds a great fire with the ties and heats the rails till they’re red-hot and twists them around trees. ‘Jeff Davis’ neckties,’ he calls them.” “A very poor joke indeed!” Mrs. Stewart remarked with dignity. “I do not know what kind of neckties our good President Davis wears, but I am sure they are not twisted around trees.” There was a laugh at this sally, at which Mrs. Stewart looked still more dignified and important, but Hal spoke directly to his mother. “Seriously,” he went on, “I have really come to warn you that it is best you should leave Washington.” “That’s quite impossible, Hal,” his mother answered quietly. “Don’t say that yet,” he went on earnestly. “Of course there’s nothing positive in war and it may be that we shall give the Yanks a good beating after all; but to tell you the truth I don’t expect it. At any rate Sherman is in Georgia, and he doesn’t stand still!” “I shall not go, in any circumstances,” Mrs. May replied firmly. “I do not believe the war has changed the Union officers into monsters. If we stay here we shall be respected even if the Yankees do come. I feel sure an empty house is much more likely to be a prey to stragglers.” “Perhaps your mother is right, Hal,” Mrs. Stewart put in anxiously, her uncertainty again getting the better of her. “I have heard that there were a few really nice people in the North in spite of everything. I never quite believed it until I met a Mrs. Biddle from Philadelphia at the White Sulphur who was really quite a cultivated female. Though to be sure her mother was from Baltimore, which may account for it.” “I am certain it is best to stay,” Miss Ivory cut in upon Mrs. Stewart with scant ceremony. “A party of ladies will be perfectly safe, no matter who gets the upper hand. But, Parthenia, my dear, if you have a wish to take the children and the servants to the Magnolia plantation I’ll stay here till you return. I can get along with Sally and Aunt Decent and one or two of the younger girls. We could manage nicely.”