elements before us as we will. We people the
plains with armed hosts; we fill the towns with busy multitudes--gay
processions throng the squares, and banners wave from steeple and tower;
over the blue sea proud fleets are seen to move, and thundering echoes
send back their dread cannonading: and through these sights and sounds
we have our especial part--lending our sympathies here, bearing our
warmest wishes there. If we dream, it is of the real, the actual, and
the true; and thus dreaming, we are but foreshadowing to ourselves
the incidents and accidents of life, and garnering up the resources
wherewith to meet them.

Stored as was his mind with recent reading, Gerald's fancy supplied him
with innumerable incidents, in every one of which he displayed the
same heroic traits, the same aptitude to meet emergency, and the same
high-hearted courage he had admired in others. Vain-gloriousness may be
forgiven when it springs, as his did, out of thorough ignorance of the
world. It is, indeed, but the warm outpouring of a generous temperament,
where self-esteem predominates. The youth ardently desired that the good
should prosper and the bad be punished: his only mistake was, that he
claimed the chief place in effecting both one and the other.

Eagerly bent upon adventure, no matter where, how, or with whom, he
stood on the mountain's peak, gazing at the scene beneath him. A waving
tract of country, traversed by small streams, stretched away toward
Tuscany, but where the boundary lay between the states he could not
detect. No town or village could be descried; and, so far as he could
see, miles and miles of journey yet lay before him ere he could arrive
at a human dwelling. This was indeed the less matter, since Tina had
fastened up in his handkerchief sufficient food for the day; and even
were night to overtake him, there was no great hardship in passing it
beneath that starry sky.

'Many there must be,' thought he, 'campaigning at this very hour, in
far-away lands, mayhap amid the sand deserts of the East, or crouching
beneath the shelter of the drifted snows in the North; and even here are
troops of gypsies, who never know what means the comfort of a roof over
them.' Just as he said these words to himself, his eyes chanced to rest
upon a thin line of pale blue smoke that arose from a group of alders
beside a stream in the valley. Faint and thin at first, it gradually
grew darker and fuller, till it rose into the clear air