ent by some hissing torrent whose splash was the only sound that broke
the universal silence--now dashing on with speed across the grassy
plain, now toiling along on foot, the bridle on my arm--I have seen the
sun go down and never heard a human voice, nor seen the footsteps of a
fellow-man; and yet what charms had those lonely hours for me, and what
a crowd of blissful thoughts and happy images they yet bring back to
me! The dark glen, the frowning precipice, the clear rivulet gurgling on
amid the mossy stones, the long and tangled weeds that hung in festoons
down some rocky cliff, through whose fissured sides the water fell in
heavy drops into a little basin at its foot--all spoke to me of the
happiest hours of my life, when, loved and loving, I wandered on the
livelong day. How often, as the day was falling, have I sat down to rest
beneath some tall beech, gazing on the glorious expanse of mountain and
valley, hill and plain, and winding river--all beneath me; and how, as
I looked, have my thoughts wandered away from those to many a far-off
mile; and then what doubts and hopes would crowd upon met Was I
forgotten? Had time and distance wiped away all memory of me? Was I as
one she had never seen, or was she still to me as when we parted? In
such moments as these how often have I recurred to our last meeting at
the holy well--and still, I own it, some vague feeling of superstition
has spoken hope to my heart, when reason alone had bid me despair.

It was at the close of a sultry day--the first of June; I shall not
readily forget it--that, overcome by fatigue, I threw myself down
beneath the shelter of a grove of acacias, and, tethering my horse with
his bridle, fell into one of my accustomed reveries. The heat of the
day, the drowsy hum of the summer insects, the very monotonous champ of
my horse, feeding beside me--all conspired to make me sleepy, and I fell
into a heavy slumber. My dreams, like my last-waking thoughts, were
of home; but, strangely enough, the scenes through which I had been
travelling, the officers with whom I was intimate, the wild guerilla
chiefs who from time to time crossed my path or shared my bivouac, were
mixed up with objects and persons many a mile away, making that odd and
incongruous collection which we so often experience in sleep. A kind of
low, unbroken sound, like the tramp of cavalry over grass, awoke me;
but still, such was my drowsiness that I was again about to relapse into
sleep,