Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/326

 of workers grew thinner and thinner, and those that were spared strained their utmost strength to do the work that was laid upon them. The days of weeping were long past. The strong grew cheerful, each one in his endeavor to keep up the courage of his fellows. The weak became reckless, and it was not an unusual thing, in that reign of terror, to hear harsh laughter and grim bravado and jest as one passed through the desolate streets. This phase was perhaps the most terrible one that Philip encountered. He found one day a drunken, blaspheming husband beside a dying wife, and in the next room a mother singing to a writhing child, soothing and petting the little one she still hoped to save, while they were bearing away from her the other darling she had watched and prayed over in vain.

It was at this time, in the fiercest stress and terror, that Virginia Allen passed on to the reward that awaited her. The two women and the man beside whom she had worked so faithfully nursed her with a care which would have saved her, had it not been written that she should die in the midst of her toil. She died, this fair Northern girl, having given her life to succor the sick and dying of a stranger city. O South! can there be any bitterness left in your hearts against a North which has laid so