The rough figure rose in the unconscious dignity with which he waved his arm and pledged his word to fight to the death. 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.