Maude and Annie, Paul Haverill and Tom Carleton watched with him through the night, and just as the beautiful Easter morning broke, and the sunlight fell upon the Rockland hills, the boy who to the last had remained true to the Southern cause, lay dead among the people who had been his foes.
At Maude’s request they buried him by the side of Isaac Simms, and Capt. Carleton ordered a handsome monument, on which the names of both the boys were cut, Isaac Simms, who had died for the North, and Charlie De Vere, who, if need be, would have given his life for the South, each holding entirely different political sentiments, but both holding the same living faith which made for them an entrance to the world where all is perfect peace, and where we who now see through a glass darkly shall then see face to face, and know why these things are so.
Six months had passed since Charlie De Vere died. Paul Haverill, Will Mather, and Captain Carleton had been together on a pilgrimage to Paul’s old neighborhood, where the people, wiser grown, welcomed back their old friend and neighbor, and strove in various ways to atone for all which had been cruel and harsh in their former dealing toward him. The war had left them destitute, so far as negroes and money were concerned; but such as they had they freely offered Paul, entreating him to stay in their midst and rebuild the homestead, whose blackened ruins bore testimony to what men’s passions will lead them to do when roused and uncontrolled. But Paul said no; he could never again live where there was so much to remind him of the past. A little way out of Nashville was a beautiful dwelling-house, which, with a few acres of highly cultivated land, was offered for sale.
Maude had spoken of the place when she was in the city, and had said:
“I should like to live there.”
And Tom had remembered it; and when he found it for sale, he suggested to Mr. Haverill that they buy it as a winter residence for Maude. And so what little property Paul Haverill had left was invested in Fair Oaks, as the place was called; and Tom gave orders that the house should be refurnished and ready for himself and bride as early as the first of November.
As far as was possible, Will and Tom found and generously rewarded those who had so kindly befriended them in their perilous journey across the mountains.
But some were missing, and only their graves remained to tell the story of their wrongs.
This trip was made in June, and early in August, the whole Carleton family went to New London, where Jimmie improved so fast that few would have recognized the pale, thin invalid, of Andersonville notoriety, in the active, red-cheeked, saucy-eyed young man, who became the life of the Pequot House, and for whom the gay belles practiced their most bewitching coquetries.