great general himself.
He would be Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great at least. It was his
preference for a career, unless being a mountain stage-driver was. He
had seen one or two such beings in the mountains when he accompanied his
father once on a canvass that he was making for Congress, enthroned
like Jove, in clouds of oil-coats and leather, mighty in power and
speech; and since then his dreams had been blessed at times with
lumbering coaches and clanking teams.

One day Gordon was sent for to come home. When he came down-stairs next
morning his father was standing in the drawing-room, dressed in full
uniform, though it was not near as showy as Gordon had expected it to
be, or as dozens of uniforms the boy had seen the day before about the
railway-stations on his journey home, gorgeous with gold lace. He was
conscious, however, that some change had taken place, and a resemblance
to the man-in-armor in the picture over the library mantel suddenly
struck the boy. There was the high look, the same light in the eyes, the
same gravity about the mouth; and when his father, after taking leave of
the servants, rode away in his gray uniform, on his bay horse
"Chevalier," with his sword by his side, to join his men at the
county-seat, and let Gordon accompany him for the first few miles, the
boy felt as though he had suddenly been transported to a world of which
he had read, and were riding behind a knight of old. Ah! if there were
only a few Roundheads formed at the big-gate, how they would
scatter them!

About the third year of the war, Mr. Keith, now a brigadier-general,
having been so badly wounded that it was supposed he could never again
be fit for service in the field, was sent abroad by his government to
represent it in England in a semi-confidential, semi-diplomatic
position. He had been abroad before--quite an unusual occurrence at
that time.

General Keith could not bring himself to leave his boy behind him and
have the ocean between them, so he took Gordon with him.

After a perilous night in running the blockade, when they were fired on
and escaped only by sending up rockets and passing as one of the
blockading squadron, General Keith and Gordon transferred at Nassau to
their steamer. The vessel touched at Halifax, and among the passengers
taken on there were an American lady, Mrs. Wickersham of New York, and
her son Ferdy Wickersham, a handsome, black-eyed boy a year or two older
than Gordon. As the two