"Nonsense, of course I will!" she murmured with a toss of her brown head.
A dog barked across the street, and a wagon rattled hurriedly over the cobblestones below. A rooster crowed for day.
She looked across the way, and a dark group of whispering women were huddled in a corner on the roof, their gaze fixed on Sumter.
Another wagon rumbled heavily over the cobbles, and another, and another. A blue light flamed from Fort Sumter, blinking at intervals. Anderson was signaling someone. To the fleet that lay on the eastern horizon beyond the bar, perhaps.
The chimes of St. Michael struck the fatal hour of four. Their sweet notes rang clear and soft and musical over the dim housetops just as they had sung to the sleeping world through years of joyous peace.
Jennie sprang to her feet and strained her eyes toward the black lump that was Sumter out in the harbor. She waited with quick beating heart for the first flash of red from the shore batteries. It did not come. Five minutes passed that seemed an hour, and still no sound of war.
Only those wagons were rumbling now at closer intervals—one after the other in quick succession. They were ammunition trains! The crack of the drivers' whips could be heard distinctly, and the cries of the men urging their horses on. The noise became at last a dull, continuous roar.
The chimes from the old church tower again sang the half hour and then it came—a sudden sword leap of red flame on the horizon! A shell rose in the sky, glowing in pale phosphorescent trail, and burst in a flash of blinding flame over the dark lump in the harbor. The flash had illumined the waters and revealed the clear outlines of the casemates with their black mouths of steel gaping through the portholes. A roar of deep, dull thunder shook the world.
Jennie fell on her knees with clasped hands and upturned face. Her lips were not moving, and no sound came from the little dry throat, but from the depths of her heart rose the old, old cry of love.