Her pride forbid it. Lost in her own backyard, only a few steps from the kitchen door! She’d never live down the shame of it.

She looped the bail of the scuttle over her arm and began to crawl clumsily on hands and knees across the dark earth. Sooner or later she’d run into something—the house, the woodpile, the barn, the well—and she’d get her bearings. It would be quicker to get up and walk. She wouldn’t feel like such a fool, either. But she might fall again, and this time twist her ankle or something. Then she’d be helpless until someone found her. No matter what she had to do, anything was better than lying alone and helpless and lost.

Where was a wall? There had to be one here someplace, she felt as if she’d crawled halfway to Jonesboro. Panic brushed past her. Suppose the darkness never lifted, suppose she just kept on crawling and crawling forever without reaching anything?

Stop it! she told herself, stop it right now. Her throat was making strangled noises.

She struggled to her feet, made herself breathe slowly, made her mind take command of her racing heart. She was Scarlett O’Hara, she told herself. She was at Tara, and she knew every foot of the place better than she knew her own hand. So what if she couldn’t see four inches in front of her? She knew what was there; all she had to do was find it.

And she’d do it on her feet, not on all fours like a baby or a dog. She lifted her chin and squared her thin shoulders. Thank God no one had seen her sprawled in the dirt or inching along over it, afraid to get up. Never in all her life had she been beaten, not by old Sherman’s army, not by the worst the carpetbaggers could do. Nobody, nothing could beat her unless she let them, and then she’d deserve it. The very idea of being afraid of the dark, like some cowardly cry-baby!

I guess I let things get me down as far as a person can go, she thought with disgust, and her own scorn warmed her. I won’t let it happen again, ever, no matter what comes. Once you get down all the way, the road can only go up. If I messed up my life, I’ll clean up the mess. I won’t lie in it.