“No, Rose,” and in the mother’s voice there was a hard, bitter tone. “No, not dead, but better so, than what he is. Oh, I would so much rather he had died when a little, innocent child, than live to bear the name he bears!” “What name, mother? What has Jimmie done? Do tell me, you frighten me, you look so white!” and Rose clung closer to her mother, who, with quivering lip and faltering voice, told her how recreant runaway Jimmie had joined the Confederate army under Beauregard, and was probably then marching on to Washington to meet her other son, in deadly conflict, it might be; his hand, the very one, perhaps, to speed the fratricidal bullet which should shed a brother’s life-blood! No wonder that her heart grew faint when she thought of her boy as a _Rebel_,—aye, a rebel of ten times deeper dye than if he had been born of Southern blood, and reared on Southern soil, for the roof-tree which sheltered his childhood was almost beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill’s monument, and many an hour had he sported at its base, playing directly above the graves of those brave men who fell that awful day when the fierce thunders of war shook the hills of Boston, and echoed across the smoky waters of the bay. Far up the lofty tower, too, as high as he could reach, his name was written with his own boyish hand, and the mother had read it there since receiving the shameful letter which told of his disgrace. Climbing up the weary, winding flight of stairs, she had looked through blinding tears upon that name,—JAMES MADISON CARLETON,—half hoping it had been erased, it seemed so like a mockery to have it there on Freedom’s Monument, and know that he who bore it was a traitor to his country. Yet there it was, just as he left it years ago, and with a blush of shame the mother crossed it out, just as she fain would have crossed out his sin could that have been. But it could not. She knew that Jimmie was in the Southern army, and not wishing to speak of it at home, where he already bore no envied name, she had come for sympathy to her only daughter; and it was well for both she did, for it helped to divert Rose’s grief into a new and different channel; to set her right on many points, and gradually to obliterate all marks of what so he had called Secession.