ugly business altogether. I wish
to God I could find my man!"

And so wishing, Private Grayrock, overcome at last by the languor of the
afternoon and lulled by the stilly sounds of insects droning and prosing
in certain fragrant shrubs, so far forgot the interests of the United
States as to fall asleep and expose himself to capture. And sleeping he
dreamed.

He thought himself a boy, living in a far, fair land by the border of a
great river upon which the tall steamboats moved grandly up and down
beneath their towering evolutions of black smoke, which announced them
long before they had rounded the bends and marked their movements when
miles out of sight. With him always, at his side as he watched them, was
one to whom he gave his heart and soul in love--a twin brother. Together
they strolled along the banks of the stream; together explored the
fields lying farther away from it, and gathered pungent mints and sticks
of fragrant sassafras in the hills overlooking all--beyond which lay the
Realm of Conjecture, and from which, looking southward across the great
river, they caught glimpses of the Enchanted Land. Hand in hand and
heart in heart they two, the only children of a widowed mother, walked
in paths of light through valleys of peace, seeing new things under a
new sun. And through all the golden days floated one unceasing sound--
the rich, thrilling melody of a mocking-bird in a cage by the cottage
door. It pervaded and possessed all the spiritual intervals of the
dream, like a musical benediction. The joyous bird was always in song;
its infinitely various notes seemed to flow from its throat, effortless,
in bubbles and rills at each heart-beat, like the waters of a pulsing
spring. That fresh, clear melody seemed, indeed, the spirit of the
scene, the meaning and interpretation to sense of the mysteries of life
and love.

But there came a time when the days of the dream grew dark with sorrow
in a rain of tears. The good mother was dead, the meadowside home by the
great river was broken up, and the brothers were parted between two of
their kinsmen. William (the dreamer) went to live in a populous city in
the Realm of Conjecture, and John, crossing the river into the Enchanted
Land, was taken to a distant region whose people in their lives and ways
were said to be strange and wicked. To him, in the distribution of the
dead mother's estate, had fallen all that they deemed of value--the
mocking-bird. They could be div