Maude had opposed it from the first, but her father had thought differently, and carrying out his principles, had lost his life in the first battle of Bull Run. Maude spoke of him to Tom, and her fine eyes were full of tears as she told of the dark, terrible days which preceded and followed the news of his death. “The ball which struck him down went further than that; it killed mother, too, and made us orphans,” Maude said, and something in the tone of her voice, and the expression of her face, puzzled Tom just as it had many times before, and carried him back to Bull Run, where it seemed to him he had seen a face like Maude De Vere’s. “Was your father killed in battle?” Tom asked, and Maude replied: “No, sir; that is, he did not die on the battle-field. He was wounded, and crawled away into the woods, where they found him dead, sitting against a tree, with a little Union drummer boy lying right beside him, and father’s handkerchief bound round the poor bleeding stumps, for the little hands were both shot away. I’ve thought of that boy so often,” Maude said, “and cried for him so much. I know father was kind to him, for the little fellow was nestled close to him, Arthur said. He was there, and found my father, though he did not at first recognize him, as it was a number of years since he had seen him.” Tom was growing both interested and excited. He was beginning to find the key to that familiar look in Maude De Vere’s face, and, coming close to her he said: “Were any prisoners taken near your father, Miss De Vere? Union prisoners, I mean?” “Yes,” Maude replied. “Arthur was a private, then, and, with another soldier, was prowling through the woods when they came upon father, and two Union soldiers near him,—one a boy, Arthur said, and one an officer, whose ankle had been sprained. In their eagerness to capture somebody they forgot my father, and carried off the man and boy. Then they went back, and Arthur found, by some papers in the dead soldier’s pocket, that it was father, and he had him decently buried at Manassas, with the little boy. I liked Arthur for that. I would never have forgiven him if he left that child in the woods. When the war is over, I am going to find the graves.” She was not weeping now, but her eyes had in them a strange glitter as they looked far off in the distance, as if in quest of those two graves.