You see my father was not dead.
The officer"-- she did not say sergeant--"who commanded the firing squad, he was what is called a compadre of my father--" "Yes, I understand--a made-brother, sealed with an oath, which binds closer than a blood-brother.

It is that, is it not ?" "So--like that.

Well, the compadre had put blank cartridges in their rifles, and my father pretended to fall dead; and the soldiers were marched away; and my father, with my mother, was carried to his home, still pretending to be dead.

It had been all arranged except the awful thing, my mother's death.

Who could foresee that?
She ought to have been told; but who could guess that she would hear of it all, and come at the moment like that?
So, that was the way she went, and I was left alone with my father." She had told the truth in all, except in conveying that her mother was not of the lower orders, and that she went to the river to wash her spaniel and her pony instead of her clothes.
"Your father--did they not arrest him again?
Did they not know ?" She shrugged her shoulders.