and play and sing, in its presence--to carry their life in their
hands, and toss it about as a juggler tosses a ball. And this for
Freedom: for the star-crowned goddess with the flaming eyes, who
trod upon the mountain-tops and called to them in the shock and fury
of the battle; whose trailing robes they followed through the dust
and cannon-smoke; for a glimpse of whose shining face they had kept
the long night vigils and charged upon the guns in the morning; for
a touch of whose shimmering robe they had wasted in prison pens,
where famine and loathsome pestilence and raving madness stalked
about in the broad daylight.

And now this army of deliverance, with its waving banners and its
prancing horses and its rumbling cannon, had marched into the
shadow-world. The very ground that it had trod was sacred; and one
who fingered the dusty volumes which held the record of its deeds
would feel a strange awe come upon him, and thrill with a sudden
fear of life--that was so fleeting and so little to be understood.
There were boyhood memories in Montague's mind, of hours of
consecration, when the vision had descended upon him, and he had sat
with face hidden in his hands.

It was for the Republic that these men had suffered; for him and his
children--that a government of the people, by the people, for the
people, might not perish from the earth. And with the organ-music of
the Gettysburg Address echoing within him, the boy laid his soul
upon the altar of his country. They had done so much for him--and
now, was there anything that he could do? A dozen years had passed
since then, and still he knew that deep within him--deeper than all
other purposes, than all thoughts of wealth and fame and power--was
the purpose that the men who had died for the Republic should find