The weather cleared and grew colder. The roads drying, the regiment made good pace. But for all the patches of bright sky there seemed to hang a pall over the land. The wind in the woods blew with a long, mournful, rushing sound. Désirée sat in the wagon with bowed head, her hands in her lap. Edward was ahead, to-day, with the regiment. The wagon went heavily on, the wind rushed on either side like goblin horsemen. At intervals during the morning the negro boy was moved to speech. “Yass’m. All de ghostes are loose in de graveyards. Dey tel’ erbout hit in de kitchen las’ night. Dey been to er voodoo woman, en she say all de ghostes loose, high en low, out er ebery graveyard, en she ain’t got no red pepper what kin lay them. She say time past she had ernough, but she ain’t got ernough now.”
“What are they doing—the ghosts?”
“Dey’re linin’ up in long lines like de poplars, en wavin’ dere arms en sayin’ ‘De end’s come! De end’s come!’ En den dey rises from de ground en goes erroun’ de plantation in er ring, ’twel you almos’ think hits jus’ er ring ob mist. But dey keep er-sayin’, ‘De end’s come! De end’s come!’ Yass’m, dey’re all out, en dere ain’t nothin’ what kin lay them!”
Moving now as they were on a main road to Columbia they this day passed or overtook numbers of people, all going their way. These people looked distracted. “What was happening to the southward?” “Ruin!” they answered. Some talked quickly and feverishly as long as they might to the soldiers; others dealt in monosyllables, shook their heads and went on with fixed gaze. Shortly before this time General Sherman had written to General Halleck: “This war differs from European wars in this particular—we are not only fighting hostile armies but a hostile people; and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of want, as well as their organized armies.” These on the road to Columbia were the unorganized—the old and very young and the sick and a great number of women.
The soldiers were troubled. “Sherman’s surely coming to Columbia, and how will five thousand men hold it against sixty thousand? You poor people oughtn’t to go there!”
“Then where should we go?”
“God knows!”
“We are from Purisburg. There isn’t a house standing.”
“We are from Barnwell. It was burning when we left. Our home was burned.”
“I am from toward Pocotaligo. It is all a waste. All black and burned.”