A few minutes later the boys separated. John going to the overcrowded little house of his parents; Ree to the Henry Catesby farm, which was the only home he had known since childhood. As he crept into bed in his attic room, and stretched his full length restfully on the straw-filled tick, again there came to him a vision of an unmarked grave in the quiet burying-ground, bringing an influence of sadness to all his thoughts. "Oh, mother, my memory of you is the dearest thing in life," he softly whispered to himself, and his mind turned fondly to his childhood. Faintly he remembered his father. More vividly he recalled the coming of a neighbor with the news of his father's death--killed by Gen. Howe's troops as they advanced on Philadelphia, after succeeding in defeating the American soldiers at Wilmington, because Gen. Washington was misled by false information. Poor Ree! How well did he remember his mother's grief, though he was too young to understand--too care-free to grieve long or deeply himself. Many times he had heard the story in after days, how his father and two companions were fired upon as they were hurrying forward to give notice of the enemy's coming; and one of the three being wounded, his father would not leave him, though in trying to save him, his own life was sacrificed. It was the third man, who escaped, who spread the news of the bravery and death of the elder Return Kingdom. Ree did not know how long a time had elapsed, but it seemed a very little while after this sad story reached his mother that she removed with him to a newer part of Connecticut, where she earned a living for them both by weaving and spinning. A happy year or two slipped by and then--ah, well, he remembered the dreary day when some neighbors had taken him to see her whom he loved so well, buried beneath the elm trees, and he knew he was left alone. Memory of the bitter tears he shed came freshly to the boy as he recalled it all--how, in but a few days, he was "bound out" to Henry Catesby with the promise that he should have a home and want for nothing. Had he been in want? Oh, he had been supplied with food and clothing and a roof over his head. Could he ask more? Yes, a thousand times, yes! He wanted friends, companionship, love. He remembered no one who had cared for him in those early days, except--Mary Catesby, his hard master's little daughter. And she was still but a child when she was told to have no association with the "bound boy;" learning of which, he had steeled his proud young heart and had spoken to her only when necessary. So with work, day in and day out, save for a few winter weeks in school, the years had passed, until he made the acquaintance of John Jerome, the son of a distant neighbor. Too poverty-distressed to be proud, he had known little happiness except a sort of sad pleasure he found in visiting the church-yard, where in summer he placed great bunches of wild flowers on the mound to him most sacred.