f the old wall in the room where Joe was sleeping,
and that I read therein the innermost thoughts of this country lad. And
I saw that he awoke to a very dreadful sense of the realities of his new
position; that, one after another, visions of other days passed before
his mind's eye as he lay gazing at the dormer window of his narrow
chamber. What a profound stillness there was! How different from the
roystering glee of the previous night! It was a stillness that seemed to
whisper of home; of his poor old mother; of the green sward lane that led
to the old farm; of the old oak tree, where the owls lived, and ghosts
were said to take up their quarters; of the stile where, of a Sunday
morning, he used to smoke his pipe with Jack, and Ned, and Charley; where
he had often stood to see Polly go by to church; and he knew that,
notwithstanding she would not so much as look at him, he loved her down
to the very sole of her boot; and would stand and contemplate the print
of her foot after she had passed; he didn't know why, for there was
nothing in it, after all. No, Joe, nothing in it--it was in you; that
makes all the difference. And the voice whispered to him of sunny days
in the bright fields, when he held the plough, and the sly old rook would
come bobbing and pecking behind him; and the little field-mouse would
flit away from its turned up nest, frightened to death, as if it were
smitten with an earthquake; and the skylark would dart up over his head,
letting fall a song upon him, as though it were Heaven's blessing. Then
the voice spoke of the noontide meal under the hedge in the warm
sunshine, or in the shade of the cool spreading tree; of the horses
feeding close up alongside the hedge; of the going home in the evening,
and the warm fireside, and the rustic song, and of the thousand and one
beloved associations that he was leaving and casting behind him for ever.
But then, again, he thought of "bettering his condition," of getting on
in the world, of the smart figure he should look in the eyes of Polly,
who would be sure now to like him better than she liked the baker. He
never could see what there was in the baker that any girl should care
for; and he thought of what the Sergeant had said about asking his
mother's leave. And then he pondered on the beef steaks and onions and
mutton chops, and other glories of a soldier's life; so he got up with a
brave, resolute heart to face the world like a man, although it was