ers from a battle lost that day at Raymond scarcely twenty miles
down the Port Gibson road, and on the day following chanced upon
Mandeville returning at last from Richmond. With him they turned west,
again by rail, and about sundown, at Big Black Bridge, ten miles east of
Vicksburg, found themselves clasping hands in open air with General
Brodnax, Irby and Kincaid, close before the torn brigade and the wasted,
cheering battery. Angels dropped down they seemed, tenderly begging off
from all talk of the Callenders, who, Flora distressfully said, had been
"grozzly exaggerated," while, nevertheless, she declared herself, with
starting tears, utterly unable to explain why on earth they had gone to
Mobile--"unlezz the bazaar." No doubt, however, they would soon
telegraph by way of Jackson. But next day, while she, as mistress of a
field hospital, was winning adoration on every side, Jackson, only
thirty miles off but with every wire cut, fell, clad in the flames of
its military factories, mills, foundries and supplies and of its
eastern, Pearl River, bridge.

LVI

BETWEEN THE MILLSTONES

Telegraph! They had been telegraphing for days, but their telegrams have
not yet been delivered.

On the evening when the camps of Johnston and Grant with burning Jackson
between them put out half the stars a covered carriage, under the
unsolicited escort of three or four gray-jacketed cavalrymen and driven
by an infantry lad seeking his command after an illness at home, crossed
Pearl River in a scow at Ratcliff's ferry just above the day's
battlefield.

"When things are this bad," said the boy to the person seated beside him
and to two others at their back, his allusion being to their
self-appointed guard, "any man you find straggling to the _front_ is the
kind a lady can trust."

This equipage had come a three hours' drive, from the pretty town of
Brandon, nearest point to which a railway train from the East would
venture, and a glimpse into the vehicle would have shown you, behind
Constance and beside Miranda, Anna, pale, ill, yet meeting every inquiry
with a smiling request to push on. They were attempting a circuit of
both armies to reach a third, Pemberton's, on the Big Black and in and
around Vicksburg.

Thus incited they drove on in the starlight over the gentle hills of
Madison county and did not accept repose until they had put Grant ten
miles behind and crossed to the south side of the Vicksburg and Jackson
Railr