For hours the fire raged unchecked—burned until the entire business section of the city lay a smoldering heap of ashes. Crowds of men, women and children crowded the Capitol Square fighting with smoke and flying cinders for a breath of fresh air. Piles of furniture lay heaped on its greensward. Terror-stricken, weeping women had dragged it from their homes. In improvised tents made of broken tables and chairs covered with sheets and bedding hundreds of homeless women and children huddled.
As night fell the pitiful reaction came from the turmoil and excitement of the day. The quiet of a great desolation brooded over the smoking ruins.
In the rich and powerful North millions were mad with joy. In New York twenty thousand people gathered in Union Square and sang the Doxology.
Jennie Barton was in Richmond through it all and yet the tragedy made no impression on her heart or mind. A greater event absorbed her.
Dick Welford had hurried to Lee's army on the day following Socola's departure from Richmond. He wanted to fight once more. Through all the whirlwind of death and blood from the first crash with Grant in the Wilderness to his vain assaults on Petersburg he had fought without a scratch. His life was charmed. And then in the first day of the final struggle which broke the lines of Lee's starving army he fell, leading his men in a glorious charge. He reached the hospital in Richmond the day before the city's evacuation.
Jennie had watched by his bedside every hour since his arrival. But few words passed between them. She let him hold her hand for hours in silence, always looking, looking and smiling his deathless love.
He had not spoken Socola's name nor had she.
"It's funny, Jennie," he said at last, "I don't hate him any more—"
The girl's head drooped and the tears streamed down her checks.