er. There might--nay, there
should, be a hundred more winters, some one of which should bring with
it events greater than any he had known. But never again would one of
them hold for him a touch of the same unlooked-for delight, the same
exquisite joy at the welcome of the world for him, that he had known
this year. He wondered, vaguely, if his mother knew how all that
bitterness of his birth, the sting of his father's whispered reputation,
had been removed from him. And as he prayed that this might be, he
yearned for one hour of her presence, of that unselfish interest in all
that interested him; for but a dozen words of her gentle but unerring
council, as he had scarcely yearned for her through the first days after
her death. But Ivan was, at this time, little given to melancholies; and
a laughing question from Vladimir in the next room, brought him back to
realities and his man's work.

Thus, finally, on the second Monday in June, the regiment began its
two-day march to camp; and bore the hours of unaccustomed walking badly
enough to draw upon it the immediate attention of every colonel in the
Corps. But its own colonel was not there to see. The senior Major led
the men to their quarters; and it was not till they had encamped for
four-and-twenty hours that Brodsky made his appearance in the luxurious
double tent prepared for him at a little distance from the end of the
officers' row.

A few days later, upon the evening of the eighteenth of the month, an
erect, smartly uniformed young officer entered a tent midway down the
narrow, canvas-lined street and flung himself, wearily, upon one of the
two camp-beds that flanked the little room. It was several moments
before he rose to remove his accoutrements, his boots and his clothes,
wrap himself in a most unmilitary dressing-gown, and throw himself down
once more with a sigh of relief.

It was past nine o'clock; but the sun was still above the edge of the
horizon, and its beams had that soft, whitish, unnatural light of the
northern summer night. A faint breeze came down from the waters of the
gulf, lifting away the fetid odors of the huge camp, and bringing relief
to the thousands of wet and dirty men who were half prostrated by heat
and unwonted exercise. Ivan, who had lain gazing moodily through the
lifted flap of the tent, had fallen into a light doze before de Windt,
more than ever his companion, came quietly in, and repeated the actions
of his comrade. Finally, w