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.
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