glided, alive with sunlight, into that
true Swanee River, not of the maps, but which flows forever, "far, far
away," through the numbers of imperishable song. The river's head of
navigation was, and still is, at Suez.

One of the most influential, and yet meekest among the "citizens"--men
not in the army--whose habit it was to visit Suez by way of the
Sandstone County road, was Judge Powhatan March, of Widewood. In years
he was about fifty. He was under the medium stature, with a gentle and
intellectual face whose antique dignity was only less attractive than
his rich, quiet voice.

His son John--he had no other child--was a fat-cheeked boy in his eighth
year, oftenest seen on horseback, sitting fast asleep with his hands
clutched in the folds of the Judge's coat and his short legs and browned
feet spread wide behind the saddle. It was hard straddling, but it was
good company.

One bright noon about the close of May, when the cotton blooms were
opening and the cornsilk was turning pink; when from one hot pool to
another the kildee fluttered and ran, and around their edges arcs of
white and yellow butterflies sat and sipped and fanned themselves, like
human butterflies at a seaside, Judge March--with John in his accustomed
place, headquarters behind the saddle--turned into the sweltering shade
of a tree in the edge of town to gossip with an acquaintance on the
price of cotton, the health of Suez and the last news from
Washington--no longer from Richmond, alas!

"Why, son!" he exclaimed, as by and by he lifted the child down before a
hardware, dry-goods, drug and music store, "what's been a-troublin' you?
You a-got tear marks on yo' face!" But he pressed the question in vain.

"Gimme yo' han'ke'cher, son, an' let me wipe 'em off."

But John's pockets were insolvent as to handkerchiefs, and the Judge
found his own no better supplied. So they changed the subject and the
son did not have to confess that those dusty rivulet beds, one on either
cheek, were there from aching fatigue of a position he would rather have
perished in than surrender.

This store was the only one in Suez that had been neither sacked nor
burned. In its drug department there had always been kept on sale a
single unreplenished, undiminished shelf of books. Most of them were
standard English works that took no notice of such trifles as children.
But one was an exception, and this world-renowned volume, though
entirely unillustrated, had charmed t