ohn
a Cleeve, canopied by the golden flag of the 46th.

The lake smiled at all his expectations and surpassed them.
He had imagined it a sepulchral sheet of water, sunk between
cavernous woods. And lo! it lay high in the light of day,
broad-rimmed, with the forests diminishing as they shelved down to
its waters. The mountains rimmed it, amethystine, remote, delicate
as carving, as vapours almost transparent; and within the rim it
twinkled like a great cup of champagne held high in a god's hand--so
high that John a Cleeve, who had been climbing ever since his
regiment left Albany, seemed lifted with all these flashing boats and
uniforms upon a platform where men were heroes, and all great deeds
possible, and the mere air laughed in the veins like wine.

Two heavy flat-boats ploughed alongside of his; deep in the bows and
yawing their sterns ludicrously. They carried a gun apiece, and the
artillerymen had laded them too far forward. To the 46th they were a
sufficiently good joke to last for miles. "Look at them up-tailed
ducks a-searching for worms! Guns? Who wants guns on this trip?
Take 'em home before they sink and the General loses his temper."
The crews grinned back and sweated and tugged, at every third drive
drenching the bowmen with spray, although not a breath of wind
rippled the lake's surface.

The boat ahead of John's carried Elliott the Senior Ensign of the
46th, with the King's colours--the flag of Union, drooping in stripes
of scarlet, white, and blue. On his right strained a boat's crew of
the New York regiment, with the great patroon, Philip Schuyler
himself, erect in the stern sheets and steering, in blue uniform and
three-cornered hat; too grand a gentleman to recognise our Ensign,
although John had danced the night through in the Schuylers' famous
white ball-room on the eve of marching from Albany, and had flung
packets of sweetmeats into the nursery windows at dawn and awakened
three night-gowned little girls to blow kisses after him as he took
his way down the hill from the Schuyler mansion. That was a month
ago. To John it seemed years since he had left Albany and its
straight sidewalks dappled with maple shade: but the patroon's face
was the same, sedately cheerful now as then when he had moved among
his guests with a gracious word for each and a brow unclouded by the
morrow.

Men like Philip Schuyler do not suffer to-morrows to perturb them,
since to them every morrow dawns big wit