That afternoon in the cemetery, as the smoke of the last salute to a hero
hung in the flickering light and drifted upward through the great trees,
as the still air was yet quivering with the notes of the bugle-call which
is the soldiers requiem, a tall figure, gaunt and bent, stepped out from
behind the blue line of the troops. It was that of Judge Whipple. He
carried in his hand a wreath of white roses--the first of many to be laid
on Richter's grave.

Poor Richter! How sad his life had been! And yet he had not filled it
with sadness. For many a month, and many a year, Stephen could not look
upon his empty place without a pang. He missed the cheery songs and the
earnest presence even more than he had thought. Carl Richter,--as his
father before him,--had lived for others. Both had sacrificed their
bodies for a cause. One of them might be pictured as he trudged with
Father Jahn from door to door through the Rhine country, or shouldering
at sixteen a heavy musket in the Landwehr's ranks to drive the tyrant
Napoleon from the beloved Fatherland Later, aged before his time, his
wife dead of misery, decrepit and prison-worn in the service of a
thankless country, his hopes lived again in Carl, the swordsman of Jena.
Then came the pitiful Revolution, the sundering of all ties, the elder
man left to drag out his few weary days before a shattered altar. In Carl
a new aspiration had sprung up, a new patriotism stirred. His, too, had
been the sacrifice. Happy in death, for he had helped perpetuate that
great Union which should be for all time the refuge of the oppressed.




CHAPTER IV