how long the hours between turn of tide and dawn may be. They were the
principal part of her life.

Keen stars held the sky at immeasurable heights. There was no mist.
The chill wind had swept the river clear like a great path. Within
reach of Jeannette's hand, but hidden from her, as most of us are
hidden from one another, sat one more solitary than herself. He had
not her robust body. Disease and anxiety had worn him away while he
was hopelessly besieging Quebec. In that last hour before the 13th of
September dawned, General Wolfe was groping down river toward one of
the most desperate military attempts in the history of the world.

There was no sound but the rustle of the water, the stir of a foot as
some standing man shifted his weight, and the light click of metal
as guns in unsteady hands touched barrels. A voice, modulating rhythm
which Jeannette could not understand, began to speak. General Wolfe
was reciting an English poem. The strain upon his soul was more
than he could bear, and he relieved it by those low-uttered rhymes.
Jeannette did not know one word of English. The meaning which reached
her was a dirge, but a noble dirge; the death hymn of a human being
who has lived up to his capacities. She felt strangely influenced,
as by the neighborhood of some large angel, and at the same time the
tragedy of being alive overswept her. For one's duty is never all
done; or when we have accomplished it with painstaking care, we are
smitten through with finding that the greater things have passed us
by.

The tide carried the boats near the great wall of rock. Woods made
denser shade on the background of night. The cautious murmur of the
speaker was cut short.