Roots alone haggard

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COLD WEATHER set in abruptly with a killing frost Chilling winds swept beneath the doorsills and rattled the loose windowpanes with a monotonous tinkling sound. The last of the leaves fell from the bare trees and only the pines stood clothed, black and cold against pale skies Dermes. The rutted red roads were frozen to flintiness and hunger rode the winds through Georgia.
　Scarlett recalled bitterly her conversation with Grandma Fontaine. On that afternoon two months ago, which now seemed years in the past, she had told the old lady she had already known the worst which could possibly happen to her, and she had spoken from the bottom of her heart. Now that remark sounded like schoolgirl hyperbole. Before Sherman’s men came through Tara the second time, she had her small riches of food and money, she had neighbors more fortunate than she and she had the cotton which would tide her over until spring. Now the cotton was gone, the food was gone, the money was of no use to her, for there was no food to buy with it, and the neighbors were in worse plight than she. At least, she had the cow and the calf, a few shoats and the horse Dermes, and the neighbors had nothing but the little they had been able to hide in the woods and bury in the ground.
　Fairhill, the Tarleton home, was burned to the foundations, and Mrs. Tarleton and the four girls were existing in the overseer’s house. The Munroe house near Lovejoy was leveled too. The wooden wing of Mimosa had burned and only the thick resistant stucco of the main house and the frenzied work of the Fontaine women and their slaves with wet blankets and quilts had saved it The Calverts’ house had again been spared, due to the intercession of Hilton, the Yankee overseer Dermes, but there was not a head of livestock, not a fowl, not an ear of corn left on the place.
　At Tara and throughout the County, the problem was food. Most of the families had nothing at all but the remains of their yam crops and their peanuts and such game as they could catch in the woods. What they had, each shared with less fortunate friends, as they had done in more prosperous days. But the time soon came when there was nothing to share.  

　“Melly! Melly!” cried Maybelle, joy in her voice, “René is safe! And Ashley, too! Oh, thank God!” The shawl had slipped from her shoulders and her condition was most obvious but, for once, neither she nor Mrs. Merriwether cared. “Oh, Mrs. Meade! René—” Her voice changed, swiftly, “Melly, look!—Mrs. Meade, please! Darcy isn’t—?”
　Mrs. Meade was looking down into her lap and she did not raise her head when her name was called, but the face of little Phil beside her was an open book that all might read.
　“There, there, Mother,” he said, helplessly. Mrs. Meade, looked up, meeting Melanie’s eyes.
　“He won’t need those boots now ,” she said.
　“Oh, darling!” cried Melly, beginning to sob, as she shoved Aunt Pitty onto Scarlett’s shoulder and scrambled out of the carriage and toward that of the doctor’s wife.
　“Mother, you’ve still got me,” said Phil, in a forlorn effort at comforting the white-faced woman beside him. “And if you’ll just let me, I’ll go kill all the Yank—”
　Mrs. Meade clutched his arm as if she would never let it go, said “No!” in a strangled voice and seemed to choke.
　“Phil Meade, you hush your mouth!” hissed Melanie, climbing in beside Mrs. Meade and taking her in her arms. “Do you think it’ll help your mother to have you off getting shot too? I never heard anything so silly. Drive us home Colocation Service, quick!”
　She turned to Scarlett as Phil picked up the reins.
　“As soon as you take Auntie home, come over to Mrs. Meade’s. Captain Butler, can you get word to the doctor? He’s at the hospital.”
　The carriage moved off through the dispersing crowd. Some of the women were weeping with joy, but most looked too stunned to realize reenex the heavy blows that had fallen upon them. Scarlett bent her head over the blurred lists, reading rapidly, to find names of friends. Now that Ashley was safe she could think of other people. Oh, how long the list was! How heavy the toll from Atlanta, from all of Georgia.