Half an hour later, and the eastern train thundered through the town, bearing away to the fields of bloody carnage, three more young, vigorous lives, and leaving desolate two homes, one the lonely cottage, where Bill’s mother wept alone, the other the Mather mansion, where Mrs. Carleton and Rose sobbed bitterly, while Annie strove in various ways to comfort them. CHAPTER XX. AT THE MATHER MANSION. It was very lonely at the Mather mansion after the departure of the soldiers, and it required all Annie’s tact to keep Rose from sinking entirely under the sense of desolation which crept over her as she began more and more to realize what the war meant, and to tremble for the safety of her husband and her brothers. They were still in Washington, but they might be ordered to advance at any moment; and, in a tremor of distress, Rose waited and watched for every mail which could bring her tidings of them. Next to her husband’s letters, Jimmie’s did her the most good, for Jimmie had in his nature a world of hopefulness and humor; and his letters were full of fun, and quaint description of the life he was leading. And still of the three young men,—Will Mather, Tom Carleton, and Jimmie,—the latter suffered the most acutely, for in addition to his dislike of military life he was compelled to endure the jokes and jeers which the coarser and more unfeeling of his comrades heaped upon him when, from Bill Baker, they heard that his first experience in arms-bearing had been learned in the army of the enemy. To one of Bill’s instincts it seemed a great thing that he had captured and brought to Washington so illustrious a prisoner as the “Corp’ral,” as he persisted in calling him, and the story was repeated with such wonderful additions, that Jimmie, when once by accident he was a listener to the tale failed utterly to recognize himself in the “chap who had run so many miles, _from_, and then fought so many hours _with_, the redoubtable Bill,” who, while annoying his quondam captive so terribly, still, under all circumstances, evinced for him an attachment as singular as it was sincere. Everything which he could do for Jimmie he did, becoming literally his servant and drudge, and thus saving him from many a hardship which, as a private, he would otherwise have encountered. It was a fancy of Jimmie’s that by serving as a private in the army against which his hand had once been lifted, he should in some way expiate his sin, and, perhaps, be surer of winning favor from Annie Graham, whose blue eyes were constantly before him just as they had looked when, in her dress of black, she stood in the spring sunshine, bidding him good-bye. Soon after his arrival in Washington, he had been offered a second lieutenancy in Captain Carleton’s company, but he steadily declined the office, giving no explanation to any one except his brother and his sister Rose, to whom he wrote: