But what business is all this of mine? I
have half a mind to go to Europe again."
He stopped, lighted a cigar, and walked briskly homeward. As he passed
by the Belding cottage, he saw that the lower story was in darkness,
and in the windows above the light was glowing behind the shades.
"So Furrey is gone, and the tired young traveller is going early to
rest."
He went into his library and sat down by the dying embers of the grate.
His mind had been full of Alice and her prospects during his long walk
in the moonlight; and now as he sat there, the image of Maud Matchin
suddenly obtruded itself upon him, and he began to compare and contrast
the two girls, both so beautiful and so utterly unlike; and then his
thoughts shifted all at once back to his own early life. He thought of
his childhood, of his parents removed from him so early that their
memory was scarcely more than a dream; he wondered what life would have
been to him if they had been spared. Then his school-days came up
before him; his journey to France with his grandfather; his studies at
St. Cyr; his return to America during the great war, his enlistment as
a private in the regular cavalry, his promotion to a lieutenancy three
days afterward, his service through the terrible campaign of the
Peninsula, his wounds at Gettysburg, and at last the grand review of
the veterans in front of the White House when the war was over.
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