It was hardly time to return to the house when the young man stood again upon the bank; and he strolled on through the wood, at this point touching upon the river so closely, that a broken reflection of the green foliage curved and shimmered along the fast-flowing waves.

Teddy looked at the water; he looked at the trees; he looked long and eagerly across the wide prairie that far westward imperceptibly melted its dim green into the faint blue of the horizon, leaving between the two a belt of tender color, nameless, but inexpressibly tempting and suggestive to the eye.  All this the lad saw, and, raising his face skyward, drew in a long draught of such air as never reaches beyond the prairies.

“Oh, but it’s good!” exclaimed he, with more meaning to the simple phrase than many a man has put to an oration.  And then he muttered, as he walked on,—­

“If it wasn’t for the thought that’s always lying like a stone at the bottom of my heart, there’d not be a happier fellow alive to-day than I. Oh the little sister!-the little sister that I never shall forget, nor forgive myself for the loss of!”

And, from the cottonwood above his head, a mocking-bird, who had perhaps caught the trick of grief from some neighbor whippoorwill, poured suddenly a flood of plaintive melody, that to the boy’s warm Irish fancy seemed a lament over the loved and lost.

He took off his hat, and looked up into the tree.

“Heaven’s blessings on you, birdy!” said he.  “It’s the very way I’d have said it myself; but I didn’t know how.”

The mocking-bird flew on; and Teddy followed, hoping for a repetition of the strain:  but the capricious little songster only twittered promises of a coming happiness greater than any pleasure his best efforts could afford, and darted away to the recesses of the forest, where was in progress an Art-Union matin‚e of such music as all the wealth of all our cities cannot buy for us.

Teddy followed for a while; and then, fearing that he should be lost in the trackless wood, turned his back upon the rising sun, and walked, as be supposed, in the direction of the house, his eyes upon the ground, his mind strangely busy with thoughts and memories of the life he had left so far behind, that, in the press and hurry of his present career, it sometimes seemed hardly to belong to him.

“God and my lady have been very good to me,” thought the boy; “but I never’ll be as happy again as when the little sister put her arms about my neck, and called me her dear Teddy, and kissed me with her own sweet mouth that maybe is dust and ashes now.  No:  I never’ll be happy that way again.”

He raised his eyes as he spoke, and started back, pale and trembling, fain to lean against the nearest tree for support under the great shock.