nd glanced back. His mother
was standing in the door, but whether she saw him or not he could not
tell. He waved his hand to her, but she did not wave back, her eyes were
failing somewhat. The next instant he disappeared in the pines.

He had crossed the little stream on the old log and passed the point
where he had met Vashti the evening before, when he thought he heard
something fall a little ahead of him. It could not have been a squirrel,
for it did not move after it fell. His old hunter's instinct caused
him to look keenly down the path as he turned the clump of bushes which
stopped his view; but he saw no squirrel or other moving thing. The
only thing he saw was a little brown something with a curious spot on
it lying in the path some little way ahead. As he came nearer it, he
saw that it was a small parcel not as big as a man's fist. Someone had
evidently dropped it the evening before. He picked it up and examined
it as he strode along. It was a little case or wallet made of some brown
stuff, such as women carry needles and thread in, and it was tied up
with a bit of red, white and blue string, the Confederate colors, on the
end of which was sewed a small bow of pink ribbon. He untied it. It was
what it looked to be: a roughly made little needle-case such as women
use, tolerably well stocked with sewing materials, and it had something
hard and almost square in a separate pocket. Darby opened this, and his
gun almost slipped from his hand. Inside was the Testament he had given
back to Vashti the evening before. He stopped stock-still, and gazed at
it in amazement, turning it over in his hand. He recognized the bow of
pink ribbon as one like that which she had had on her dress the evening
before. She must have dropped it. Then it came to him that she must have
given it to one of her brothers, and a pang shot through his heart. But
how did it get where he found it? He was too keen a woodsman not to know
that no footstep had gone before his on that path that morning. It was a
mystery too deep for him, and after puzzling over it a while he tied the
parcel up again as nearly like what it had been before as he could,
and determined to give it to one of the Mills boys when he reached the
Cross-roads. He unbuttoned his jacket and put it into the little inner
pocket, and then rebuttoning it carefully, stepped out again more
briskly than before.

It was perhaps an hour later that the Mills boys set out for the
Cross-roads.