esty, he found them
soaring to the regions of the improbable and fanciful. His imagination
led him a wild race, and pictured him in the act of performing marvelous
deeds of valor and skill.

Fancy is a blind and reckless leader; and it gave our hero oftentimes a
command which his reason would not have permitted him to accept. What
boys, and even what men, think, when stimulated by ambition, would be too
ridiculous to put upon paper. If their thoughts could be disclosed to the
impertinent eye of the world, the proprietors would blushingly disown and
disclaim them.

Still, almost every live man and boy gives the reins to his fancy; and in
the Army of the Potomac, we will venture to say, there were a hundred
thousand privates and officers who permitted themselves to dream that
they were brigadiers and major-generals; that they did big things, and
received the grateful homage of the world. At any rate, Lieutenant Somers
did, modest as he was, even while he felt that he was utterly incompetent
to perform the duties incumbent on the two stars or the one star.

Experience had given him some confidence in his own powers; and there was
something delightful in the idea of having an independent command. It was
a partial, a very partial, realization of the wanderings of his vivid
fancy. He felt able to do something which Lilian Ashford would take
pleasure in reading in the newspapers; perhaps something which would
prove his fitness for a brigadier's star at some remote period. Now, we
have made all this explanation to show how Somers had prepared himself to
accomplish some great thing. The mission with which he had been intrusted
was an important one; and the safety of the whole left wing of the army
might depend upon its faithful performance.

He was wrought up to the highest pitch of patriotic inspiration by the
charge which had been laid upon him; and he was determined to bring back
the information required of him, even if he had to fly through the air to
obtain it. It was of no use to suggest impossibilities to a young man in
such a frame of mind; he did not know the meaning of the word. To impress
him with the importance of the duty intrusted to him, the general of
division had given him a faint outline of the intended movements of the
army. If the enemy massed his forces in this direction, it was of vital
necessity that the general should know it.

Thus prepared and thus inspired, Lieutenant Somers marched his little
for