Scarlett was in Marietta when Rhett's urgent telegram came. There was a train leaving for Atlanta in ten minutes and she caught it, carrying no baggage except her reticule and leaving Wade and Ella at the hotel with Prissy.

Atlanta was only twenty miles away but the train crawled interminably through the wet early autumn afternoon, stopping at every bypath for passengers. Panic stricken at Rhett's message, mad for speed, Scarlett almost screamed at every halt. Down the road lumbered the train through forests faintly, tiredly gold, past red hillsides still scarred with serpentine breastworks, past old battery emplacements and weed-grown craters, down the road over which Johnston's men had retreated so bitterly, fighting every step of the way. Each station, each crossroad the conductor called was the name of a battle, the site of a skirmish. Once they would have stirred Scarlett to memories of terror but now she had no thought for them.

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