ONE:In short, he was a riddle no one could make out; and very soon he received from the other passengers the nickname of "The Mystery." Fred suggested that Mystery and Mr. A. were so nearly alike that the one name was as good as the other.Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh, the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring, with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be, in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I feel the thrill of it to this hour.
FORE:At that, despite himself, the Sunday afternoon mood dried up also. She was in the office again, was she? Well, so was he. If she had only looked at him, had called him Mr Keeling, he would have been Mr Keeling. As it was, he became sir with a vengeance.
FORE:The voyage from Hong-kong to Canton is partly among islands and through a bay, and partly on the Pearl River. The navigation is easy in the first part of the course, but after the steamer has reached the narrower portion of the river the great number of junks and other craft compels a sharp lookout on the part of the pilots, to avoid accidents. They passed the famous Whampoa Anchorage, where the ocean-bound ships used to receive their cargoes before Hong-kong assumed its present importance. A few miles farther on, the great city of Canton was brought into sight as the steamer swung around a bend in the river. In front was the island of Ho-nan, with its temple bowered in trees, and on the surface of the river there were thousands of boats of many kinds and sizes. The boys remembered what they had heard of the boat population of Canton, and now they realized that they had reached a city where sixty thousand people make their homes on the water.
