was easier. Perhaps it was a luxurious traveling carriage, drawn
by two splendid horses in plated harness, driven along the sandy road.
There were a gentleman and a young lad on the front seat, and on the
back seat a handsome pale lady with a little girl beside her. Behind, on
the rack with the trunk, was a colored boy, an imp out of a story-book.
John was told that the black boy was a slave, and that the carriage
was from Baltimore. Here was a chance for a romance. Slavery, beauty,
wealth, haughtiness, especially on the part of the slender boy on the
front seat,--here was an opening into a vast realm. The high-stepping
horses and the shining harness were enough to excite John's admiration,
but these were nothing to the little girl. His eyes had never before
fallen upon that kind of girl; he had hardly imagined that such a lovely
creature could exist. Was it the soft and dainty toilet, was it the
brown curls, or the large laughing eyes, or the delicate, finely cut
features, or the charming little figure of this fairy-like person? Was
this expression on her mobile face merely that of amusement at seeing
a country-boy? Then John hated her. On the contrary, did she see in him
what John felt himself to be? Then he would go the world over to serve
her. In a moment he was self-conscious. His trousers seemed to creep
higher up his legs, and he could feel his very ankles blush. He hoped
that she had not seen the other side of him, for, in fact, the patches
were not of the exact shade of the rest of the cloth. The vision flashed
by him in a moment, but it left him with a resentful feeling. Perhaps
that proud little girl would be sorry some day, when he had become a
general, or written a book, or kept a store, to see him go away and
marry another. He almost made up his cruel mind on the instant that he
would never marry her, however bad she might feel. And yet he could
n't get her out of his mind for days and days, and when her image was
present, even Cynthia in the singers' seat on Sunday looked a little
cheap and common. Poor Cynthia! Long before John became a general or
had his revenge on the Baltimore girl, she married a farmer and was the
mother of children, red-headed; and when John saw her years after, she
looked tired and discouraged, as one who has carried into womanhood none
of the romance of her youth.

Fishing and dreaming, I think, were the best amusements John had. The
middle pier of the long covered bridge over the