apon he now bore bravely,
as became the son of an heroic race, and pausing now and again in the
sunny space of the forest assumed, with some exaggeration, the postures
of aggression and defense that he had been taught by the engraver's art.
Made reckless by the ease with which he overcame invisible foes
attempting to stay his advance, he committed the common enough military
error of pushing the pursuit to a dangerous extreme, until he found
himself upon the margin of a wide but shallow brook, whose rapid waters
barred his direct advance against the flying foe that had crossed with
illogical ease. But the intrepid victor was not to be baffled; the
spirit of the race which had passed the great sea burned unconquerable
in that small breast and would not be denied. Finding a place where some
bowlders in the bed of the stream lay but a step or a leap apart, he
made his way across and fell again upon the rear-guard of his imaginary
foe, putting all to the sword.

Now that the battle had been won, prudence required that he withdraw to
his base of operations. Alas; like many a mightier conqueror, and like
one, the mightiest, he could not

curb the lust for war,
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the loftiest star.

Advancing from the bank of the creek he suddenly found himself
confronted with a new and more formidable enemy: in the path that he was
following, sat, bolt upright, with ears erect and paws suspended before
it, a rabbit! With a startled cry the child turned and fled, he knew not
in what direction, calling with inarticulate cries for his mother,
weeping, stumbling, his tender skin cruelly torn by brambles, his little
heart beating hard with terror--breathless, blind with tears--lost in
the forest! Then, for more than an hour, he wandered with erring feet
through the tangled undergrowth, till at last, overcome by fatigue, he
lay down in a narrow space between two rocks, within a few yards of the
stream and still grasping his toy sword, no longer a weapon but a
companion, sobbed himself to sleep. The wood birds sang merrily above
his head; the squirrels, whisking their bravery of tail, ran barking
from tree to tree, unconscious of the pity of it, and somewhere far away
was a strange, muffled thunder, as if the partridges were drumming in
celebration of nature's victory over the son of her immemorial
enslavers. And back at the little plantation, where white men and black
were hastily