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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Valley of Vision, by Henry Van Dyke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Valley of Vision
+
+Author: Henry Van Dyke
+
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6009]
+This file was first posted on October 16, 2002
+Last Updated: April 17, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VALLEY OF VISION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VALLEY OF VISION
+
+A Book Of Romance
+
+And Some Half-Told Tales
+
+
+By Henry Van Dyke
+
+
+   _"Your old men shall dream dreams,
+    Your young men shall see visions."_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO MY CHILDREN
+
+AND CHILDREN'S CHILDREN
+
+WHO MAY REMEMBER THESE TROUBLOUS TIMES WHEN WE ARE GONE ON NEW ADVENTURE
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+"Why do you choose such a title as _The Valley of Vision_ for
+your book," said my friend; "do you mean that one can see farther
+from the valley than from the mountain-top?"
+
+This question set me thinking, as every honest question ought to
+do. Here is the result of my thoughts, which you will take for what
+it is worth, if you care to read the book.
+
+The mountain-top is the place of outlook over the earth and the sea.
+But it is in the valley of suffering, endurance, and self-sacrifice
+that the deepest visions of the meaning of life come to us.
+
+I take the outcome of this Twentieth Century War as a victory over
+the mad illusion of  world-dominion which the Germans saw from
+the peak of their military power in 1914. The united force of the
+Allies has grown, through valley-visions of right and justice and
+human kindness, into an irresistible might before which the German
+"will to power" has gone down in ruin.
+
+There are some Half-Told Tales in the volume--fables, fantasies--mere
+sketches, grave and gay, on the margin of the book of life,
+
+
+    "Where more is meant than meets the ear."
+
+
+Dreams have a part in most of the longer stories.  That is because
+I believe dreams have a part in real life. Some of them we remember
+as vividly as any actual experience. These belong to the imperfect
+sleep. But others we do not remember, because they are given to
+us in that perfect sleep in which the soul is liberated, and goes
+visiting. Yet sometimes we get a trace of them, by a happy chance,
+and often their influence remains with us in that spiritual refreshment
+with which we awake from profound slumber. This is the meaning of
+that verse in the old psalm: "He giveth to His beloved in sleep."
+
+The final story in the book was written before the War of 1914
+began, and it has to do with the Light of the World, leading us
+through conflict and suffering towards Peace.
+
+AVALON, November 24, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+     A Remembered Dream
+     Antwerp Road
+     A City of Refuge
+     A Sanctuary of Trees
+     The King's High Way
+     HALF-TOLD TALES
+         The Traitor in the House
+         Justice of the Elements
+         Ashes of Vengeance
+     The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France
+     The Hearing Ear
+     Sketches of Quebec
+     A Classic Instance
+     HALF-TOLD TALES
+         The New Era and Carry On
+         The Primitive and His Sandals
+         Diana and the Lions
+     The Hero and Tin Soldiers
+     Salvage Point
+     The Boy of Nazareth Dreams
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+The sails and smoke-stacks of great shift were visible, all passing
+out to sea
+
+The cathedral spire... was swaying and rocking in the air like the
+mast of a ship at sea
+
+All were fugitives, anxious to be gone... and making no more speed
+than a creeping snail's pace of unutterable fatigue
+
+"I will ask you to choose between your old home and your new home
+now"
+
+"I'm going to carry you in, 'spite of hell"
+
+"I was a lumberjack"
+
+"I am going to become a virtuous peasant, a son of the soil, a
+primitive"
+
+The Finding of Christ in the Temple
+
+
+
+
+
+A REMEMBERED DREAM
+
+
+This is the story of a dream that came to me some five-and-twenty
+years ago. It is as vivid in memory as anything that I have ever
+seen in the outward world, as distinct as any experience through
+which I have ever passed. Not all dreams are thus remembered. But
+some are. In the records of the mind, where the inner chronicle of
+life is written, they are intensely clear and veridical. I shall
+try to tell the story of this dream with an absolute faithfulness,
+adding nothing and leaving nothing out, but writing the narrative
+just as if the thing were real.
+
+Perhaps it was. Who can say?
+
+In the course of a journey, of the beginning and end of which
+I know nothing, I had come to a great city, whose name, if it was
+ever told me, I cannot recall.
+
+It was evidently a very ancient place. The dwelling-houses and
+larger buildings were gray and beautiful with age, and the streets
+wound in and out among them wonderfully, like a maze.
+
+This city lay beside a river or estuary--though that was something
+that I did not find out until later, as you will see--and the newer
+part of the town extended mainly on a wide, bare street running
+along a kind of low cliff or embankment, where the basements of
+the small houses on the water-side  went down, below the level of
+the street, to the shore. But the older part of the town was closely
+and intricately built, with gabled roofs and heavy carved facades
+hanging over the narrow stone-paved  ways, which here and there
+led out suddenly into open squares.
+
+It was in what appeared to be the largest and most important of
+these squares that I was standing,  a little before midnight. I
+had left my wife and our little girl in the lodging which we had
+found, and walked out alone to visit the sleeping town.
+
+The night sky was clear, save for a few filmy clouds, which floated
+over the face of the full moon, obscuring it for an instant, but
+never completely hiding it--like veils in a shadow dance. The spire
+of the great cathedral was silver filigree on the moonlit side, and
+on the other side, black lace.  The square was empty. But on the
+broad, shallow steps in front of the main entrance of the cathedral
+two heroic figures were seated. At first I thought they were statues.
+Then I perceived they were alive, and talking earnestly together.
+
+They were like Greek gods, very strong and beautiful, and naked
+but for some slight drapery that fell snow-white around them. They
+glistened in the moonlight. I could not hear what they were saying;
+yet I could see that they were in a dispute which went to the very
+roots of life.
+
+They resembled each other strangely in form and feature--like twin
+brothers. But the face of one was noble, lofty, calm, full of a vast
+regret and compassion. The face of the other was proud, resentful,
+drawn with passion. He appeared to be accusing and renouncing his
+companion, breaking away from an ancient friendship in a swift,
+implacable  hatred. But the companion seemed to plead with him,
+and lean toward him, and try to draw him closer.
+
+A strange fear and sorrow shook my heart. I felt that this
+mysterious contest was something of immense importance; a secret,
+ominous strife; a menace to the world.
+
+Then the two figures stood up, marvellously alike in strength and
+beauty, yet absolutely different in  expression and bearing, the
+one serene and benignant,  the other fierce and threatening. The
+quiet one was still pleading, with a hand laid upon the other's
+shoulder. But he shook it off, and thrust his companion away with
+a proud, impatient gesture.
+
+At last I heard him speak.
+
+"I have done with you," he cried. "I do not believe in you. I have
+no more need of you. I renounce  you. I will live without you. Away
+forever  out of my life!"
+
+At this a look of ineffable sorrow and pity came upon the great
+companion's face.
+
+"You are free," he answered. "I have only besought  you, never
+constrained you. Since you will have it so, I must leave you, now,
+to yourself."
+
+He rose into the air, still looking downward with wise eyes full
+of grief and warning, until he vanished  in silence beyond the thin
+clouds.
+
+The other did not look up, but lifting his head with a defiant
+laugh, shook his shoulders as if they were free of a burden. He
+strode swiftly around the corner of the cathedral and disappeared
+among the deep shadows.
+
+A sense of intolerable calamity fell upon me. I said to myself:
+
+"That was Man! And the other was God!  And they have parted!"
+
+Then the multitude of bells hidden in the lace-work of the high
+tower began to sound. It was not the aerial fluttering music of
+the carillon that I remembered hearing long ago from the belfries
+of the Low Countries. This was a confused and strident  ringing,
+jangled and broken, full of sudden tumults and discords, as if the
+tower were shaken and the bells gave out their notes at hazard, in
+surprise  and trepidation.
+
+It stopped as suddenly as it began. The great bell of the hours
+struck twelve. The windows of the cathedral glowed faintly with a
+light from within.
+
+"It is New Year's Eve," I thought--although I knew perfectly well
+that the time was late summer. I had seen that though the leaves
+on the trees of the square were no longer fresh, they had not yet
+fallen.
+
+I was certain that I must go into the cathedral.  The western
+entrance was shut. I hurried to the south side. The dark, low door
+of the transept was open. I went in. The building was dimly lighted
+by huge candles which flickered and smoked like torches. I noticed
+that one of them, fastened against a pillar, was burning crooked,
+and the tallow  ran down its side in thick white tears.
+
+The nave of the church was packed with a vast throng of people,
+all standing, closely crowded together,  like the undergrowth in
+a forest. The rood-screen  was open, or broken down, I could not
+tell which. The choir was bare, like a clearing in the woods, and
+filled with blazing light.
+
+On the high steps, with his back to the altar, stood Man, his face
+gleaming with pride.
+
+"I am the Lord!" he cried. "There is none above me! No law, no God!
+Man is power.  Man is the highest of all!"
+
+A tremor of wonder and dismay, of excitement and division, shivered
+through the crowd. Some  covered their faces. Others stretched
+out their hands. Others shook their fists in the air. A tumult  of
+voices broke from the multitude--voices  of exultation, and anger,
+and horror, and strife.
+
+The floor of the cathedral was moved and lifted by a mysterious
+ground-swell. The pillars trembled and wavered. The candles flared
+and went out.  The crowd, stricken dumb with a panic fear, rushed
+to the doors, burst open the main entrance, and struggling in furious
+silence poured out of the building.  I was swept along with them,
+striving to keep on my feet.
+
+One thought possessed me. I must get to my wife and child, save
+them, bring them out of this accursed city.
+
+As I hurried across the square I looked up at the cathedral spire.
+It was swaying and rocking in the air like the mast of a ship
+at sea. The lace-work fell from it in blocks of stone. The people
+rushed screaming through the rain of death. Many were struck down,
+and lay where they fell.
+
+I ran as fast as I could. But it was impossible to run far. Every
+street and alley vomited men--all struggling together, fighting,
+shouting, or shrieking,  striking one another down, trampling over
+the fallen--a hideous melee. There was an incessant rattling noise
+in the air, and heavier peals as of thunder shook the houses. Here
+a wide rent yawned in a wall--there a roof caved in--the windows
+fell into the street in showers of broken glass.
+
+How I got through this inferno I do not know.  Buffeted and blinded,
+stumbling and scrambling to my feet again, turning this way or
+that way to avoid the thickest centres of the strife, oppressed and
+paralyzed by a feeling of impotence that put an iron band around
+my heart, driven always by the intense longing to reach my wife and
+child, somehow I had a sense of struggling on. Then I came into a
+quieter quarter of the town, and ran until I reached the lodging
+where I had left them.
+
+They were waiting just inside the door, anxious and trembling. But
+I was amazed to find them so little panic-stricken. The little girl
+had her doll in her arms.
+
+[Illustration with caption: The cathedral spire... was swaying and
+rocking in the air like the mast of a ship at sea.]   "What is it?"
+asked my wife. "What must we do?"
+
+"Come," I cried. "Something frightful has happened  here. I can't
+explain now. We must get away at once. Come, quickly."
+
+Then I took a hand of each and we hastened through the streets,
+vaguely steering away from the centre of the city.
+
+Presently we came into that wide new street of mean houses, of
+which I have already spoken.  There were a few people in it, but
+they moved heavily  and feebly, as if some mortal illness lay upon
+them. Their faces were pale and haggard with a helpless anxiety to
+escape more quickly. The houses seemed half deserted. The shades
+were drawn, the doors closed.
+
+But since it was all so quiet, I thought that we might find some
+temporary shelter there. So I knocked at the door of a house where
+there was a dim light behind the drawn shade in one of the windows.
+
+After a while the door was opened by a woman who held the end of
+her shawl across her mouth.  All that I could see was the black
+sorrow of her eyes.
+
+"Go away," she said slowly; "the plague is here.  My children are
+dying of it. You must not come in! Go away."
+
+So we hurried on through that plague-smitten street, burdened
+with a new fear. Soon we saw a house on the riverside which looked
+absolutely empty. The shades were up, the windows open, the door
+stood ajar. I hesitated; plucked up courage;  resolved that we
+must get to the waterside in some way in order to escape from the
+net of death which encircled us.
+
+"Come," I said, "let us try to go down through this house. But
+cover your mouths."
+
+We groped through the empty passageway, and down the basement-stair.
+The thick cobwebs swept my face. I noted them with joy, for I thought
+they proved that the house had been deserted for some time, and so
+perhaps it might not be infected.
+
+We descended into a room which seemed to have been the kitchen.
+There was a stove dimly visible at one side, and an old broken
+kettle on the floor, over which we stumbled. The back door was
+locked.  But it swung outward as I broke it open. We stood upon a
+narrow, dingy beach, where the small waves were lapping.
+
+By this time the "little day" had begun to whiten the eastern sky;
+a pallid light was diffused; I could see westward down to the main
+harbor, beside the heart of the city. The sails and smoke-stacks
+of great ships were visible, all passing out to sea. I wished that
+we were there.
+
+Here in front of us the water seemed shallower.  It was probably only
+a tributary or backwater of the main stream. But it was sprinkled
+with smaller vessels--sloops, and yawls, and luggers--all filled
+with people and slowly creeping seaward.
+
+There was one little boat, quite near to us, which seemed to be
+waiting for some one. There were some people on it, but it was not
+crowded.
+
+"Come," I said, "this is for us. We must wade out to it."
+
+So I took my wife by the hand, and the child in the other arm,
+and we went into the water.  Soon it came up to our knees, to our
+waists.
+
+"Hurry," shouted the old man at the tiller.  "No time to spare!"
+
+"Just a minute more," I answered, "only one minute!"
+
+That minute seemed like a year. The sail of the boat was shaking
+in the wind. When it filled she must move away. We waded on, and
+at last I grasped the gunwale of the boat. I lifted the child in
+and helped my wife to climb over the side.  They clung to me. The
+little vessel began to move gently away.
+
+"Get in," cried the old man sharply; "get in quick."
+
+But I felt that I could not, I dared not. I let go of the boat. I
+cried "Good-by," and turned to wade ashore.
+
+I was compelled to go back to the doomed city.  I must know what
+would come of the parting of Man from God!
+
+The tide was running out more swiftly. The water swirled around my
+knees. I awoke.
+
+But the dream remained with me, just as I have told it to you.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ANTWERP ROAD
+
+
+[OCTOBER, 1914]
+
+Along the straight, glistening road, through a dim arcade of drooping
+trees, a tunnel of faded green and gold, dripping with the misty
+rain of a late October afternoon, a human tide was flowing, not
+swiftly, but slowly, with the patient, pathetic slowness of weary
+feet, and numb brains, and heavy hearts.
+
+Yet they were in haste, all of these old men and women, fathers
+and mothers, and little children; they were flying as fast as
+they could; either away from something that they feared, or toward
+something  that they desired.
+
+That was the strange thing--the tide on the road flowed in two
+directions.
+
+Some fled away from ruined homes to escape the perils of war. Some
+fled back to ruined homes to escape the desolation of exile. But
+all were fugitives,  anxious to be gone, striving along the road
+one way or the other, and making no more speed than a creeping
+snail's pace of unutterable fatigue.  I saw many separate things
+in the tide, and  remembered them without noting.
+
+A boy straining to push a wheelbarrow with his pale mother in it,
+and his two little sisters trudging at his side. A peasant with his
+two girls driving their lean, dejected cows back to some unknown
+pasture. A bony horse tugging at a wagon heaped high with bedding
+and household gear, on top of which sat the wrinkled grandmother
+with the tiniest  baby in her arms, while the rest of the family
+stumbled alongside--and the cat was curled up on the softest coverlet
+in the wagon. Two panting dogs, with red tongues hanging out, and
+splayed feet clawing the road, tugging a heavy-laden cart while the
+master pushed behind and the woman pulled in the shafts. Strange,
+antique vehicles crammed with passengers. Couples and groups and
+sometimes larger companies of foot-travellers.  Now and then a
+solitary man or woman, old and shabby, bundle on back, eyes on the
+road, plodding through the mud and the mist, under the high archway
+of yellowing leaves.
+
+[Illustration: All were fugitives, anxious to be gone, ... and
+making no more speed than a creeping snail's pace of unutterable
+fatigue.]
+
+All these distinct pictures I saw, yet it was all one vision--a
+vision of humanity with its dumb companions in flight--infinitely
+slow, painful,  pitiful flight!
+
+I saw no tears, I heard no cries of complaint.  But beneath the
+numb and patient haste on all those dazed faces I saw a question.
+
+_"What have we done? Why has this thing come upon us and our
+children?"_
+
+Somewhere I heard a trumpet blown. The brazen spikes on the helmets
+of a little troop of German soldiers flashed for an instant, far
+down the sloppy road. Through the humid dusk came the dull, distant
+booming of the unseen guns of conquest in Flanders.
+
+That was the only answer.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A CITY OF REFUGE
+
+
+In the dark autumn of 1914 the City sprang up almost in a night,
+as if by enchantment.
+
+It was white magic that called it into being--the deep, quiet,
+strong impulse of compassion and  protection that moved the motherly
+heart of Holland when she saw the hundreds of thousands of Belgian
+fugitives pouring out of their bleeding, ravaged land, and running,
+stumbling, creeping on hands and knees, blindly, instinctively
+turning to her for safety and help.
+
+"Come to me," she said, like a good woman who holds out her arms and
+spreads her knees to make a lap for tired and frightened children,
+"come to me.  I will take care of you. You shall be safe with me."
+
+All doors were open. The little brick farmhouses  and cottages with
+their gayly painted window-shutters;  the long rows of city houses
+with their steep gables; the prim and placid country mansions set
+among their high trees and formal flower-gardens--all kinds of
+dwellings, from the poorest to the richest, welcomed these guests
+of sorrow and distress. Many a humble family drained its savings-bank
+reservoir to keep the stream of its hospitality flowing. Unused
+factories were turned into barracks. Deserted summer hotels were
+filled up. Even empty greenhouses were adapted to the need of human
+horticulture. All Holland was enrolled, formally or informally, in
+a big _Comite voor Belgische Slachtoffers._
+
+But soon it was evident that the impromptu methods of generosity
+could not meet the demands of the case. Private resources were
+exhausted.  Poor people could no longer feed and clothe their
+poorer guests. Families were unhappily divided.  In the huge flock
+of exiles driven out by the cruel German Terror there were goats as
+well as sheep, and some of them bewildered and shocked the orderly
+Dutch homes where they were sheltered, by their nocturnal habits
+and negligible morals.  Something had to be done to bring order and
+system into the chaos of brotherly love. Otherwise the neat Dutch
+mind which is so close to the Dutch heart could not rest in its bed.
+This vast trouble which the evil of German militarism had thrust
+upon a helpless folk must be helped out by a wise touch of military
+organization, which is a good thing even for the most peaceful
+people.
+
+So it was that the City of Refuge (and others like it) grew up
+swiftly in the wilderness.
+
+It stands in the heathland that slopes and rolls from the wooded
+hills of Gelderland to the southern shore of the Zuider Zee--a sandy
+country overgrown with scrub-oaks and pines and heather--yet very
+healthy and well drained, and not unfertile under cultivation. You
+may see that in the little  neighbor-village, where the trees arch
+over the streets, and the kitchen-gardens prosper, and the shrubs
+and flowers bloom abundantly.
+
+The small houses and hotels of this tiny summer resort are of brick.
+It has an old, well-established look; a place of relaxation with
+restraint, not of ungirdled frivolity. The plain Dutch people love
+their holidays, but they take them serenely and by rule: long walks
+and bicycle-rides, placid and nourishing picnics in the woods or
+by the sea, afternoon tea-parties in sheltered arbors. One of their
+favorite names for a country-place is _Wel Teweden,_ "perfectly
+contented."
+
+The commandant of the City of Refuge lives in one of the little
+brick houses of the village. He is a portly, rosy old bachelor,
+with a curly brown beard and a military bearing; a man of fine
+education and wide experience, seasoned in colonial diplomacy.
+The ruling idea in his mind is discipline, authority. His official
+speech is abrupt and final, the manner of a martinet covering a
+heart full of kindness and generous impulses.
+
+"Come," he says, after a good breakfast, "I want you to see my
+camp. It is not as fine and fancy as the later ones. But we built
+it in a hurry and we had it ready on time."
+
+A short ride over a sandy road brings you to the city gate--an
+opening in the wire enclosure of perhaps two or three square miles
+among the dwarf pines and oaks. The guard-house is kept by a squad
+of Dutch soldiers. But it is in no sense a prison-camp, for people
+are coming and going freely all the time, and the only rules within
+are those of decency and good order.
+
+"Capacity, ten thousand," says the commandant, sweeping his hand
+around the open circle, "quite a city, _niet waar?_ I will
+show you the  various arrangements."
+
+All the buildings are of wood, a mushroom city, but constructed with
+intelligence to meet the needs of the sudden, helpless population.
+You visit the big kitchen with its ever-simmering kettles; the
+dining-halls with their long tables and benches; the schoolhouses
+full of lively, irrepressible children; the wash-house where always
+talkative and jocose laundresses are scrubbing and wringing the
+clothes; the sewing-rooms where hundreds of women and girls are
+busy with garments and gossip; the chapel where religious services
+are held by the devoted pastors; the recreation-room which is the
+social centre of the city; the clothing storerooms where you find
+several American girls working for love.
+
+Then you go through the long family barracks where each family has
+a separate cubicle, more or less neat and comfortable, sometimes
+prettily decorated, according to the family taste and habit; the
+barracks for the single men; the barracks for the single women;
+the two hospitals, one general, the other for infectious diseases;
+and last of all, the house where the half-dozen disorderly women are
+confined, surrounded by a double fence of barbed wire and guarded
+by a sentry.
+
+Poor, wretched creatures! You are sorry for them. Why not put the
+disorderly men into a house of confinement, too?
+
+"Ah," says the commandant bluntly, "we find it easier and better
+to send the disorderly men to jail or hospital in some near town.
+We are easier with the women. I pity them. But they are full of
+poison. We can't let them go loose in the camp for fear of infection."
+
+How many of the roots of human nature are uncovered in a place like
+this! The branches and the foliage and the blossoms, too, are seen
+more clearly in this air where all things are necessarily open and
+in common.
+
+The men are generally less industrious than the women. But they
+work willingly at the grading of roads and paths, the laying out
+and planting of flower-beds, the construction of ornamental designs,
+of doubtful taste but unquestionable sincerity.
+
+You read the names which they have given to the different streets
+and barracks, and the passageways between the cubicles, and you
+understand the strong, instinctive love which binds them to their
+native Belgium. "Antwerp Avenue," "Louvain Avenue," "Malines Street,"
+"Liege Street," and streets bearing the names of many ruined towns
+and villages of which you have never heard, but which are forever
+dear to the hearts of these exiles.  The names of the hero-king,
+Albert, and of his brave consort, Queen Elizabeth, are honored by
+inscriptions, and their pictures, cut from, newspapers,  decorate
+the schoolrooms and the little family cubicles.
+
+The brutal power which reigns at Berlin may drive the Belgians out
+of Belgium by terror and oppression. But it cannot drive Belgium
+out of the hearts of the Belgians. While they live their country
+lives, and Albert is still their King.
+
+But think of the unnatural conditions into which these thousands
+of human beings--yes, and hundreds  of thousands like them, torn
+from their homes, uprooted, dispersed, impoverished--are forced by
+this bitter, cruel war. Think of the cold and ruined hearthstones,
+the scattered families, the shelterless children, the desolate and
+broken hearts. This is what Germany has inflicted upon mankind in
+order to  realize her robber-dream!
+
+Yet the City of Refuge, being human, has its bright spots and its
+bits of compensation. Here is one, out of many.
+
+The chief nurse, a young Dutch lady of charming face  and manners,
+serving as a volunteer under the sacred  sign of the Red Cross,
+comes in, one morning, to make her report to the commandant.
+
+"Well," he says, disguising in his big voice of command the warm
+admiration which he feels for the lady, "what is the trouble to-day?
+Speak up."
+
+"Nothing, sir," she answers calmly. "Everything  is going on pretty
+well. No new cases of measles--those in hospital improving. The
+only thing that bothers me is the continual complaint about that
+Mrs. Van Orley--you remember her, a thin, dark little person. She
+is melancholy and morose, quarrels all the time, says some one has
+stolen her children. The people near her in the barracks complain
+that she disturbs them at night, moans and talks aloud in her sleep,
+jumps up and runs down the corridor laughing or crying: 'Here they
+are!' They don't believe she ever had any children. They think
+she is crazy and want her put out. But I don't agree with that. I
+think she has had children, and now she has dreams."
+
+"Send her away," growls the commandant; "send her to a sanatorium!
+This camp is not a lunatic asylum."
+
+"But," interposes the nurse in her most discreet  voice, "she is
+really a very nice woman. If you would allow me to take her on as
+a housemaid in the general hospital, I think I could make  something
+out of her; at least I should like to try."
+
+"Have your own way," says the commandant, relenting; "you always
+do. Now tell me the next trouble. You have something more up your
+sleeve, I'm sure."
+
+"Babies," she replies demurely; "two babies from Amsterdam. Lost,
+somehow or other, in the flight. No trace of their people. A family
+in Zaandam has been taking care of them, but can't afford it any
+longer. So the Amsterdam committee has sent them here."
+
+The commandant has listened, his cheeks growing  redder and redder,
+his eyes rounder and more prominent. He springs up and paces the
+floor  in wrath.
+
+"Babies!" he cries stormily. "By all the gods, da--those Amsterdammers!
+Excuse me, but this is too much. Do they think this is a foundling
+asylum? or a nursing home? Babies! What in Heaven's name am I to
+do with them? Babies!  Where are those babies?"
+
+"Just outside, and very nice babies indeed," says the nurse, opening
+the hall door and giving a soft call.
+
+Enter a slim black-haired boy of about three and a half years and
+a plump golden-haired girl about a year younger. They toddle to
+the nurse and snuggle against her blue dress and white apron.
+
+Smiling she guides them toward the commandant and  says: "Here they
+are, sir. How do you like them?"
+
+That terrific personage has been suddenly  transformed from haircloth
+into silk. He beams, and pulling out his fat gold watch, coos like
+a hoarse dove: "Look here, _kinderen_, come and hear the bells
+in my tick-tock!"
+
+Presently he has one of them leaning against the inside of each
+knee, listening ardently to the watch.
+
+"What do you think of that!" he says. "What is your name, youngster?"
+
+"Hendrik," answers the boy, looking up.
+
+"Hendrik _what?_ You have another name, haven't you?"
+
+The boy shakes his head and looks puzzled, as if the thought of
+two names were too much for him.  _"Hendrik,"_ he repeats more
+clearly and firmly.
+
+"And what is her name?" asks the commandant, patting the little
+girl.
+
+_"Sooss,"_ answers the boy. "Mama say _'ickle angel.'_
+Hendrik say _Sooss."_
+
+All effort to get any more information from the children was fruitless.
+They were too small to  remember much, and what they did remember
+was of their own size--only very little things, of no  importance
+except to themselves. The commandant looks at the nurse quizzically.
+
+"Now, miss, you have unloaded these vague babies on me. What do
+you propose that I should do with them? Adopt them?"
+
+"Not yet, anyhow," she answers, smiling broadly.  "Let us take them
+up to the camp. I'll bet we can find some one there to look after
+them. What do you say, sir?"
+
+"Well, well," he sighs, "have your own way as usual! Just ring that
+bell for the automobile,  _als't-Ublieft."_
+
+In the busy sewing-room the two children are standing up on one
+of the tables. The commandant has an arm around each of them, for
+they are a little frightened by so much noise and so many eyes
+looking at them. The chatter dies down, as he speaks in his gruff
+authoritative voice, but with a twinkle in his eyes, rather like
+a middle-aged  Santa Claus.
+
+"Look here! I've got two fine babies."
+
+A titter runs through the room.
+
+_"Ja, Men'eer,"_ says one of the women, "congratulations!
+They are _lievelingen_--darlings!"
+
+"Silence!" growls the commandant amiably.  "None of your impudence,
+you women. Look here!  These two children--I want somebody to adopt
+them, or at least to take care of them. I will pay for them. Their
+names are Hendrik and--"
+
+A commotion at the lower end of the room. A thin, dark little
+woman is standing up, waving her piece of sewing like a flag, her
+big eyes flaming  with excitement.
+
+"Stop!" she cries, hurrying and stumbling forward  through the
+crowd of women and girls. "Oh, stop a minute! They are mine--I lost
+them--mine, I tell you--lost--mine!"
+
+She reaches the head of the table and flings her arms around the
+boy, crying: "My Hendrik!"
+
+The boy hesitates a second, startled by the sudden  wildness of
+her caress. Then he presses his hot little face in her neck.
+
+_"Lieve moeder!"_ he murmurs. "Where was you? I looked."
+
+But the thin, dark little woman has fainted  dead away.
+
+The rest we will leave, as the wise commandant does, to the chief
+nurse.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A SANCTUARY OF TREES
+
+
+The Baron d'Azan was old--older even than his seventy years. His
+age showed by contrast as he walked among his trees. They were
+fresh and  flourishing, full of sap and vigor, though many of them
+had been born long before him.
+
+The tracts of forest which still belonged to his diminished estate
+were crowded with the growths native to the foot-hills of the
+Ardennes. In the park around the small chateau, built in a Belgian
+version of the First Empire style, trees from many lands had been
+assembled by his father and grandfather: drooping spruces from
+Norway, dark-pillared  cypresses from Italy, spreading cedars from
+Lebanon, trees of heaven from China, fern-leaved gingkos from Japan,
+lofty tulip-trees and liquidambars  from America, and fantastic
+sylvan forms from islands of the Southern Ocean. But the royal
+avenue of beeches! Well, I must tell you more about that, else you
+can never feel the meaning of this story.
+
+The love of trees was hereditary in the family and antedated their
+other nobility. The founder of the house had begun life as the son
+of a forester in Luxemburg. His name was Pol Staar. His fortune  and
+title were the fruit of contracts for horses and provisions which
+he made with the commissariat  of Napoleon I. in the days when the
+Netherlands  were a French province. But though Pol Staar's hands
+were callous and his manners plain, his tastes were aristocratic.
+They had been formed young in the company of great trees.
+
+Therefore when he bought his estate of Azan (and took his title
+from it) he built his chateau in a style which he considered
+complimentary to his imperial patron, but he was careful also to
+include within his domain large woodlands in which he could renew
+the allegiance of his youth. These woodlands he cherished and
+improved, cutting with discretion, planting with liberality, and
+rejoicing in the thought that trees like those which had  befriended
+his boyhood would give their friendly  protection to his heirs.
+These are traits of an  aristocrat--attachment to the past, and
+careful provision for posterity. It was in this spirit that Pol
+Staar, first Baron d'Azan, planted in 1809 the broad avenue of
+beeches, leading from the chateau straight across the park to the
+highroad. But he never saw their glory,  for he died when they were
+only twenty years old.
+
+His son and successor was of a different timber and grain; less
+aristocratic, more bourgeois--a rover, a gambler, a man of fashion.
+He migrated from the gaming-tables at Spa to the Bourse at Paris,
+perching at many clubs between and beyond, and making seasonal
+nests in several places. This left him little time for the Chdteau
+d'Azan. But he came there every spring and autumn, and showed the
+family fondness for trees in his own fashion.  He loved the forests
+so much that he ate them. He cut with liberality and planted without
+discretion.  But for the great avenue of beeches he had a saving
+admiration. Not even to support the gaming-table would he have
+allowed them to be felled.
+
+When he turned the corner of his thirty-first year he had a sharp
+illness, a temporary reformation,  and brought home as his wife a
+very young lovely actress from the ducal theatre at Saxe-Meiningen.
+She was a good girl, deeply in love with her handsome husband, to
+whom she bore a son and heir in the first year of their marriage.
+Not many moons thereafter the pleased but restless father slid back
+into his old rounds again. The forest waned and the debts waxed.
+Rumors of wild doings came from Spa and Aix, from Homburg  and
+Baden, from Trouville and Ostend. After four years of this the young
+mother died, of no namable disease, unless you call it heart-failure,
+and the boy was left to his grandmother's care and company among
+the trees.
+
+Every day when it was fair the old lady and the little lad took
+their afternoon walk together in the beech-tree avenue, where the
+tips of the branches now reached the road. At other times he roamed
+the outlying woods and learned to know the birds and the little
+wild animals. When he was twelve his grandmother died. After that
+he was left mainly to the housekeeper, his tutors, and the few
+friends he could make among the children of the neighborhood.
+
+When he had finished his third year at the University  of Louvain
+and attained his majority, his father returned express-haste from
+somewhere in Bohemia, to attend the coronation of Leopold II,
+that remarkable King of Belgium and the Bourse.  But by this time
+the gay Baron d'Azan had become stout, the pillar of his neck seemed
+shorter because it was thicker, and the rose in his bold cheek had
+the purplish tint of a crimson rambler. So he died of an apoplexy
+during the festivities, and his son brought him back to the Chateau
+d'Azan, and buried him there with due honor, and mourned for him
+as was fitting. Thus Albert, third Baron d'Azan, entered  upon his
+inheritance.
+
+It seemed, at first, to consist mainly of debts.  These were paid by
+the sale of the deforested lands and of certain detached woodlands.
+By the same method, much as he disliked it, he made a modest
+provision of money for continuing his education and beginning his
+travels. He knew that he had much to learn of the world, and he
+was especially desirous of pursuing his favorite study of botany,
+which a wise old priest at Louvain had taught him to love. So he
+engaged an intelligent and faithful forester to care for the trees
+and the estate, closed the house, and set forth on his journeys.
+
+They led him far and wide. In the course of them no doubt he
+studied other things than botany.  It may be that he sowed some of
+the wild oats with which youth is endowed; but not in the gardens
+of others; nor with that cold self-indulgence which transforms
+passionate impulse into sensual habit.  He had a permanent and
+regulative devotion to botanical research; and that is a study which
+seems to promote modesty, tranquillity, and steadiness of mind in
+its devotees, of whom the great Linnaeus is the shining exemplar.
+Young Albert d'Azan sat at the feet of the best masters in Europe
+and America. He crossed the western continent to observe the oldest
+of living things, the giant Sequoias of California. He went to
+Australasia and the Dutch East Indies and South America in search
+of new ferns and orchids. He investigated the effect of ocean
+currents and of tribal migrations in the distribution  of trees.
+His botanical monographs brought him renown among those who know,
+and he was elected a corresponding member of many scientific
+societies. After twenty years of voyaging he  returned to port at
+Azan, richly laden with observation  and learning, and settled down
+among his trees to pursue his studies and write his books.
+
+The estate, under the forester's care, had improved  a little and
+promised a modest income. The house, though somewhat dilapidated,
+was easily made livable. But the one thing that was full of glory
+and splendor, triumphantly prosperous, was the great avenue of
+beeches. Their long, low aisle of broad arches was complete. They
+shimmered with a pearly mist of buds in early spring and later
+with luminous green of tender leafage. In mid-summer they formed a
+wide, still stream of dark, unruffled verdure; in autumn they were
+transmuted  through glowing yellow into russet gold; in winter
+their massy trunks were pillars of gray marble and the fan-tracery
+of their rounded branches was delicately etched against the sky.
+
+"Look at them," the baron would say to the guests whom the fame of
+his learning and the charm of his wide-ranging conversation often
+brought to his house. "Those beeches were planted by my grandfather
+after the battle of Wagram, when  Napoleon whipped the Austrians.
+After that came the Beresina and Leipsic and Waterloo and how many
+battles and wars of furious, perishable men. Yet the trees live
+on peaceably, they unfold their strength in beauty, they have not
+yet reached the summit of their grandeur. We are all _parvenus_
+beside them."
+
+"If you had to choose," asked the great sculptor Constantin Meunier
+one day, "would you have your house or one of these trees struck
+by lightning?"
+
+"The house," answered the botanist promptly, "for I could rebuild
+it in a year; but to restore the tree would take three-quarters of
+a century."
+
+"Also," said the sculptor, with a smile, "you might change the
+style of your house with advantage,  but the style of these trees
+you could never improve."
+
+"But tell me," he continued, "is it true, as they say, that lightning
+never strikes a beech?"
+
+"It is not entirely true," replied the botanist, smiling in his
+turn, "yet, like many ancient beliefs, it has some truth in it.
+There is something in the texture of the beech that seems to resist
+electricity better than other trees. It may be the fatness of the
+wood. Whatever it is, I am glad of it, for it gives my trees a
+better chance."
+
+"Don't be too secure," said the sculptor, shaking his head. "There
+are other tempests besides those in the clouds. When the next war
+comes in western Europe Belgium will be the battle-field. Beech-wood
+is very good to burn."
+
+"God forbid," said the baron devoutly. "We have had peace for a
+quarter of a century. Why should it not last?"
+
+"Ask the wise men of the East," replied the sculptor grimly.
+
+When he was a little past fifty the baron married, with steadfast
+choice and deep affection, the orphan daughter of a noble family
+of Hainault.  She was about half his age; of a tranquil, cheerful
+temper and a charm that depended less on feature than on expression;
+a lover of music, books, and a quiet life. She brought him a small
+dowry by which the chateau was restored to comfort, and bore him
+two children, a boy and a girl, by whom it was  enlivened with
+natural gayety. The next twenty years were the happiest that Albert
+d'Azan and his wife ever saw. The grand avenue of beeches became
+to them the unconscious symbol of something settled and serene,
+august, protective, sacred.
+
+On a brilliant morning of early April, 1914, they had stepped out
+together to drink the air. The beeches were in misty, silver bloom
+above them.  All around was peace and gladness.
+
+"I want to tell you a dream I had last night," he said, "a strange
+dream about our beeches."
+
+"If it was sad," she answered, "do not let the shadow of it fall
+on the morning."
+
+"But it was not sad. It seemed rather to bring light and comfort.
+I dreamed that I was dead  and you had buried me at the foot of
+the largest  of the trees."
+
+"Do you call that not sad?" she interrupted reproachfully.
+
+"It did not seem so. Wait a moment and you  shall hear the way of
+it. At first I felt only a deep quietness and repose, like one who
+has been in pain and is very tired and lies down in the shade to
+sleep. Then I was waking again and something was drawing me gently
+upward. I cannot exactly explain it, but it was as if I were passing
+through the roots and the trunk and the boughs of the beech-tree
+toward the upper air. There I saw the light again and heard the
+birds singing and the wind rustling among the leaves. How I saw
+and heard I cannot tell you, for there was no remembrance of a body
+in my dream. Then suddenly my soul--I suppose it was that--stood
+before God and He was asking me: 'How did you come hither?'
+I answered,  'By Christ's way, by the way of a tree.' And He said
+it was well, and that my work in heaven should be the care of the
+trees growing by the river of life, and that sometimes I could go
+back to visit my trees on earth, if I wished. That made me very
+glad, for I knew that so I should see you and our children under
+the beeches. And while I was wondering  whether you would ever
+know that I was there, the dream dissolved, and I saw the morning
+light on the tree-tops. What do you think of my dream? Childish,
+wasn't it?"
+
+She thought a little before she answered.
+
+"It was natural enough, though vague. Of course we could not be
+buried at the foot of the beech-tree unless Cardinal Mercier would
+permit a plot of ground to be consecrated there. But come, it is
+time to go in to breakfast."
+
+She seemed to dismiss the matter from her mind.  Yet, as women so
+often do, she kept all these sayings and pondered them in her heart.
+
+The promise of spring passed into the sultry heat of summer. The
+storm-cloud of the twentieth century  blackened over Europe. The
+wise men of Berlin made mad by pride, devoted the world not to
+the Prince of Peace but to the lords of war. In the first week of
+August the fury of the German  invasion broke on Belgium. No one had
+dared to dream the terrors of that tempest. It was like a return
+of the Dark Ages. Every home trembled. The  pillars of the tranquil
+house of Azan were shaken.
+
+The daughter was away at school in England, and that was an unmixed
+blessing. The son was a lieutenant in the Belgian army; and that
+was right and glorious, but it was also a dreadful anxiety.  The
+father and mother were divided in mind, Whether to stay or take
+flight with their friends.  At last the father decided the hard
+question.
+
+"It is our duty to stay. We cannot fight for our country, but we
+can suffer with her. Our daughter is in safety; our son's danger we
+cannot and would not prevent. How could we really live away from
+here, our home, our trees? I went to consult the cardinal. He stays,
+and he advises us to do so. He says that will be the best way to
+show our devotion. As Christians we must endure the evil that we
+cannot prevent; but as Belgians our hearts will never consent to
+it."
+
+That was their attitude as the tide of blood and tears drew nearer
+to them, surrounded them, swept beyond them, engulfed the whole
+land. The brutal massacres at Andenne and Dinant were so near that
+the news arrived before the spilt blood was dry. The exceeding great
+and bitter cry of anguish came to them from a score of neighboring
+villages, from a hundred lonely farmhouses. The old botanist
+withered and faded daily; his wife grew pale and gray. Yet they
+walked their _via crucis_ together, and kept their chosen
+course.
+
+They fed the hungry and clothed the naked,  helped the fugitives and
+consoled the broken-hearted.  They counselled their poor neighbors
+to good order, and dissuaded the ignorant from the folly and peril
+of violence. Toward the invading soldiery their conduct was beyond
+reproach. With no false professions  of friendship, they fulfilled
+the hard services which  were required of them. Their servants had
+been helped away at the beginning of the trouble--all except the
+old forester and his wife, who refused  to leave. With their aid
+the house was kept open and many of the conquerors lodged there
+and in the outbuildings. So good were the quarters that a departing
+Saxon chalked on the gate-post the dubious inscription: _"Gute
+Leute-nicht auspliin-dern."_  Thus the captives at the Chateau
+d'Azan had a good name even among their enemies. The baron received
+a military pass which enabled him to move quite freely about the
+district on his errands of necessity and mercy, and the chateau
+became a favorite billet for high-born officers.
+
+In the second year of the war an evil chance brought two uninvited
+guests of very high standing indeed--that is to say in the social
+ring of Potsdam.  Their names are well known. Let us call them
+Prince Barenberg and Count Ludra. The first was a major, the second
+a captain. Their value as  warriors in the field had not proved
+equal to their prominence as noblemen, so they were given duty in
+the rear.
+
+They were vicious coxcombs of the first order.  Their uniforms
+incased them tightly. Like wasps they bent only at the waist. Their
+flat-topped caps were worn with an aggressive slant, their swords
+jingled menacingly, their hay-colored mustaches spoke arrogance in
+every upturned hair.  When they bowed it was a mockery; when they
+smiled it was a sneer. For the comfortable quarters  of the Chateau
+d'Azan they had a gross appreciation,  for the enforced hospitality
+of its owners an insolent condescension. They took it as their due,
+and resented the silent protest underneath it.
+
+"Excellent wine, Herr Baron," said the prince, who, like his comrade,
+drank profusely of the best in the cellar. "Your Rudesheimer Berg
+'94 is _kolossal._ Very friendly of you to save it for us.
+We Germans know good wine. What?"
+
+"You have that reputation," answered the baron.
+
+"And say," added the count, "let us have a couple of bottles more,
+dear landlord. You can put it in the bill."
+
+"I shall do so," said the baron gravely. "It shall be put in the
+bill with other things."
+
+"But why," drawled the prince, "does _la Baronne_ never favor
+us with her company? Still very attractive--musical probably--here
+is a piano--want good German music--console homesickness."
+
+"Madame is indisposed," answered the baron quietly, "but you may
+be sure she regrets your absence from home."
+
+The officers looked at each other with half-tipsy, half-angry eyes.
+They suspected a jest at their expense, but could not quite catch
+it.
+
+"Impudence," muttered the count, who was the sharper of the two
+when sober.
+
+"No," said the prince, "it is only stupidity.  These Walloons have
+no wit."
+
+"Come," he added, turning to the baron, "we sing you a good song of
+fatherland--show how _gemuthlich_ we Germans are. You Belgians
+have no word for that. What?"
+
+He sat down to the piano and pounded out _"Deutschland ueber
+Alles,"_ singing the air in a raucous voice, while Ludra added
+a rumbling bass.
+
+"What do you think of that? All Germans can sing. _Gemuthlich._
+What?"
+
+"You are right," said the baron, with downcast eyes. "We Belgians
+have no word for that. It is inexpressible--except in German. I
+bid you good night."
+
+For nearly a fortnight this condition of affairs continued. The
+baron endured it as best he could, obeying scrupulously the military
+regulations which necessity laid upon him, and taking his revenge
+only in long thoughts and words of polite sarcasm which he knew would
+not be understood. The baroness worked hard at the housekeeping,
+often cooking and cleaning with her own hands, and rejoicing secretly
+with her husband over the rare news that came from their daughter
+in England, from their boy at the front in West Flanders. Sometimes,
+when the coast was clear, husband and wife walked together under the
+beech-trees and talked in low tones of the time when the ravenous
+beast should no more go up on the land.
+
+The two noble officers performed their routine duties, found such
+amusement as they could in neighboring villages and towns, drank
+deep at night, and taxed their ingenuity to invent small ways of
+annoying their hosts, for whom they felt the  contemptuous dislike
+of the injurer for the injured.  They were careful, however, to
+keep their malice within certain bounds, for they knew that the
+baron was in favor with the commandant of the district.
+
+One morning the baron and his wife, looking from their window in
+a wing of the house, saw with  surprise and horror a score or more
+of German soldiers assembled beside the beech-avenue, with axes
+and saws, preparing to begin work.
+
+"What are they going to do there?" cried he in dismay, and hurried
+down to the dining-room, where the officers sat at breakfast, giving
+orders to an attentive corporal.
+
+"A thousand pardons, Highness," interrupted the baron; "forgive
+my haste. But surely you are not going to cut down my avenue of
+beeches?"
+
+"Why not?" said the prince, swinging around in his chair. "They
+are good wood."
+
+"But, sir," stammered the baron, trembling with excitement, "those
+trees--they are an ancient  heritage of the house--planted by my
+grandfather a century ago--an old possession--spare them for their
+age."
+
+"You exaggerate," sneered the prince. "They are not old. I have on
+my hunting estate in  Thuringia oaks five hundred years old. These
+trees of yours are mere upstarts. Why shouldn't they be cut? What?"
+
+"But they are very dear to us," pleaded the baron earnestly. "We
+all love them, my wife and children  and I. To us they are sacred.
+It would be harsh to take them from us."
+
+"Baron," said the prince, with suave malice, "you miss the point.
+We Germans are never harsh.  But we are practical. My soldiers need
+exercise.  The camps need wood. Do you see? What?"
+
+"Certainly," answered the poor baron, humbling himself in his
+devotion to his trees. "Your  Highness makes the point perfectly
+clear--the  need of exercise and wood. But there is plenty  of good
+timber in the forest and the park--much  easier to cut. Cannot your
+men get their wood  and their exercise there, and spare my dearest
+trees?"
+
+Ludra laughed unpleasantly.
+
+"You do not yet understand us, dear landlord.  We Germans are
+a hard-working people, not like the lazy Belgians. The harder the
+work the better we like it. The soldiers will have a fine time
+chopping down your tough beeches."
+
+The slender old man drew himself up, his eyes flashed, he was driven
+to bay.
+
+"You shall not do this," he cried. "It is an outrage, a sacrilege.
+I shall appeal to the  commandant. He will protect my rights."
+
+The officers looked at each other. Deaf to pity, they had keen ears
+for danger. A reproof, perhaps a punishment from their superior
+would be most unpleasant. They hesitated to face it. But they were
+too obstinate to give up their malicious design altogether with a
+good grace.
+
+"Military necessity," growled the prince, "knows no private rights.
+I advise you, baron, not to  appeal to the commandant. It will be
+useless,  perhaps harmful."
+
+"Here, you," he said gruffly, turning to the  corporal, "carry out
+my orders. Cut the two marked beeches by the gate. Then take your
+men into the park and cut the biggest trees there. Report for
+further orders to-morrow morning."
+
+The wooden-faced giant saluted, swung on his heels, and marched
+stiffly out. The baron followed him quickly.
+
+He knew that entreaties would be wasted on the corporal. How to get
+to the commandant, that was the question? He would not be allowed
+to use the telephone which was in the dining-room, nor the automobile
+which belonged to the officers; nor one of their horses which were
+in his stable. The only other beast left there was a small and very
+antique donkey which the children used to drive. In a dilapidated
+go-cart, drawn by this pattering nag, the baron made such haste
+as he could along twelve miles of stony road to the district
+headquarters. There he told his story simply to the commandant and
+begged protection for his beloved trees.
+
+The old general was of a different type from the fire-eating dandies
+who played the master at Azan.  He listened courteously and gravely.
+There was a picture in his mind of the old timbered house in the
+Hohe Venn, where he had spent four years in retirement before the
+war called him back to the colors. He thought of the tall lindens
+and the spreading chestnuts around it and imagined how he should
+feel if he saw them falling under the axe.
+
+Then he said to his petitioner:
+
+"You have acted quite correctly, _Monsieur le Baron,_ in
+bringing this matter quietly to my  attention. There is no military
+necessity for the  destruction of your fine trees. I shall put a
+stop  to it at once."
+
+He called his aide-de-camp and gave some instructions  in a low tone
+of voice. When the aide came back from the telephone and reported,
+the general frowned.
+
+"It is unheard of," he muttered, half to himself, "the  way those
+titled young fools go beyond their orders."
+
+Then he turned to his visitor.
+
+"I am very sorry, _Monsieur le Baron,_ but two of your beeches
+have already fallen. It cannot be helped now. But there shall be no
+more of it, I promise you. Those young officers are--they are--let
+us call them overzealous. I will transfer them to another post
+to-morrow. The German command  appreciates the correct conduct of
+you and _Madame la Baronne._ Is there anything more that I
+can do for you?"
+
+"I thank your Excellency sincerely," replied the baron. Then he
+hesitated a moment, as if to weigh his words. "No, _Herr General,_
+I believe there is nothing more--in which you can help me."
+
+The old soldier's eyelids flickered for an instant.  "Then I bid
+you a very good day," he said, bowing.
+
+The baron hurried home, to share the big good news with his wife.
+The little bad news she knew already. Together they grieved over
+the two fallen trees and rejoiced under the golden shadow of their
+untouched companions. The officers had called for wine, and more
+wine, and yet more wine, and were drinking deep and singing loud
+in the dining-room.
+
+In the morning came an orderly with a despatch from headquarters,
+ordering the prince and the count to duty in a dirty village of
+the coal region.  Their baggage was packed into the automobile,
+and they mounted their horses and went away in a rage.
+
+"You will be sorry for this, dumbhead," growled the prince, scowling
+fiercely. "Yes," added Ludra, with a hateful grin, "we shall meet
+again, dear landlord, and you will be sorry."
+
+Their host bowed and said nothing.
+
+Some weeks later the princely automobile came to the door of the
+chateau. The forester brought up word that the Prince Barenberg
+and the Count Ludra were below with a message from headquarters;
+the commandant wished the baron to come there immediately; the
+automobile was sent to bring him.  He made ready to go. His wife
+and his servant tried hard to dissuade him: it was late, almost
+dark, and very cold--not likely the commandant had sent for him--it
+might be all a trick of those officers--they were hateful men--they
+would play some cruel prank for revenge. But the old man was
+obstinate in his resolve; he must do what was required of him, he
+must not even run the risk of slighting the commandant's wishes;
+after all, no great harm could come to him.
+
+When he reached the steps he saw the count in the front seat, beside
+the chauffeur, grinning; and the prince's harsh voice, made soft
+as possible, called from the shadowy interior of the car:
+
+"Come in, baron. The general has sent for you in a hurry. We will
+take you like lightning. How fine your beeches look against the
+sky. What?"
+
+The old man stepped into the dusky car. It rolled down the long
+aisle, between the smooth gray columns, beneath the fan-tracery of
+the low arches, out on to the stony highway. Thus the tree-lover
+was taken from his sanctuary.
+
+He did not return the next day, nor the day after.  His wife, tortured
+by anxiety, went to the district headquarters. The commandant was
+away. The aide could not enlighten her. There had been no message
+sent to the baron--that was certain. Major Barenberg and Captain
+Ludra had been transferred to another command. Unfortunately,
+nothing could be done except to report the case.
+
+The brave woman was not broken by her anguish, but raised to the
+height of heroic devotion. She dedicated herself to the search for
+her husband.  The faithful forester, convinced that his master had
+been killed, was like a slow, sure bloodhound on the track of the
+murderers. He got a trace of them in a neighboring village, where
+their car had been seen to pass at dusk on the fatal day. The
+officers were in it, but not the baron. The forester got a stronger
+scent of them in a wine-house, where their chauffeur had babbled
+mysteriously on the following  day. The old woodsman followed the
+trail with inexhaustible patience.
+
+"I shall bring the master's body home," he said to his  mistress,
+"and God will use me to avenge his murder."
+
+A few weeks later he found his master's corpse hidden in a hollow
+on the edge of the forest, half-covered with broken branches,
+rotting leaves, and melting snow. There were three bullets in the
+body. They had been fired at close range.
+
+The widow's heart, passing from the torture of uncertainty to the
+calm of settled grief, had still a sacred duty to live for. She had
+not forgotten her husband's dream. She went to the cardinal-archbishop
+to beg the consecration of a little burial-plot at the foot of the
+greatest of the beeches of Azan.  That wise and brave prince of
+the church consented with words of tender consolation, and promised
+his aid in the pursuit of the criminals.
+
+"Eminence," she said, weeping, "you are very good to me. God will
+reward you. He is just.  He will repay. But my heart's desire is
+to follow my husband's dream."
+
+So the body of the old botanist was brought back to the shadow of
+the great beech-trees, and was buried there, like the bones of a
+martyr, within  the sanctuary.
+
+Is this the end of the story?
+
+Who can say?
+
+It is written also, among the records of Belgium, that the faithful
+forester disappeared mysteriously a few weeks later. His body was
+found in the forest and laid near his master.
+
+Another record tells of the trial of Prince Barenberg  and Count
+Ludra before a court martial, The count was sentenced to ten years
+of labor _on his own estate._ The death-sentence of the prince
+was  commuted to imprisonment _in some unnamed place._ So far
+the story of German justice.
+
+But of the other kind of justice--the poetic, the Divine--the record
+is not yet complete.
+
+I know only that there is a fatherless girl working and praying in
+a hospital in England, and a fatherless  boy fighting and praying
+in the muddy trenches near Ypres, and a lonely woman walking and
+praying  under certain great beech-trees at the Chateau d'Azan. The
+burden of their prayer is the same.  Night and day it rises to Him
+who will judge the world in righteousness and before whose eyes
+the wicked shall not stand.
+
+September, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE KING'S HIGH WAY
+
+
+In the last remnant of Belgium, a corner yet  unconquered by
+the German horde, I saw a tall young man walking among the dunes,
+between the sodden lowland and the tumbling sea.
+
+The hills where he trod were of sand heaped high by the western winds;
+and the growth over them was wire-grass and thistles, bayberry and
+golden broom and stunted pine, with many humble wild flowers--things
+of no use, yet beautiful.
+
+The sky above was gray; the northern sea was gray; the southern
+fields were hazy gray over green; the smoke of shells bursting
+in the air was gray.  Gray was the skeleton of the ruined city in
+the  distance; gray were the shattered spires and walls of a dozen
+hamlets on the horizon; gray, the eyes of the young man who walked
+in faded blue uniform, in the remnant of Belgium. But there was an
+indomitable  light in his eyes, by which I knew that he was a King.
+
+"Sir," I said, "I am sure that you are his Majesty, the King of
+Belgium."
+
+He bowed, and a pleasant smile relaxed his  tired face.
+
+"Pardon, monsieur," he answered, "but you make the usual mistake in
+my title. If I were only 'the King of Belgium,' you see, I should
+have but a poor kingdom now--only this narrow strip of earth, perhaps
+four hundred square miles of debris, just a _'pou sto,'_ a
+place to stand, enough to fight on, and if need be to die in."
+
+His hand swept around the half-circle of dull landscape visible
+southward from the top of the loftiest dune, the _Hooge Blikker._
+It was a land of slow-winding streams and straight canals and flat
+fields, with here and there a clump of woods or a slight rise of
+ground, but for the most part level and monotonous, a checker-board
+landscape--stretching away until the eyes rested on the low hills
+beyond Ypres. Now all the placid charm of Flemish fertility as gone
+from the land--it was scarred and marred and pitted. The shells
+and mines had torn holes in it; the trenches and barbed-wire
+entanglements spread over it like a network of scars and welts; the
+trees were smashed into kindling-wood; the farmhouses were heaps
+of charred bricks; the shattered villages were like mouths full
+of broken teeth. As the King looked round at all this, his face
+darkened and the slight droop of his shoulders grew more marked.
+
+"But, no," he said, turning to me again, "that is not my kingdom.
+My real title, monsieur, is _King of the Belgians._ It was for
+their honor, for their liberty, that I was willing to lose my land
+and risk my crown. While they live and hold true, I stand fast."
+
+Then ran swiftly through me the thought, of how the little Belgian
+army had fought, how the Belgian  people had suffered, rather than
+surrender the independence of their country to the barbarians.  The
+German cannonade was roaring along the Yser a few miles away; the
+air trembled with the overload  of sound; but between the peals of
+thunder I could hear the brave song of the skylark climbing his
+silver stairway of music, undismayed, hopeful, unconquerable. I
+remembered how the word of this quiet man beside whom I stood had
+been the inspiration and encouragement of his people through the
+fierce conflict, the long agony: _"I have faith in our destiny;
+a nation which defends itself does not perish; God will be with us
+in that just cause."_
+
+"Sir," I said, "you have a glorious kingdom which shall never be
+taken away. But as for your land, the fates have been against you.
+How will you ever get back to it? The Germans are strong as iron
+and they bar the way. Will you make a peace with them and take what
+they have so often offered you?"
+
+"Never," he answered calmly; "that is not the way home, it is the
+way to dishonor. When God brings me back, my army and my Queen are
+going with me to liberate our people. There is only one way that
+leads there--the King's high way. Look, _monsieur,_ you can
+see the beginning of it down there. I hope you wish me well on that
+road, for I shall never take another."
+
+So he bade me good afternoon very courteously and walked away among
+the dunes to his little  cottage at La Panne.
+
+Looking down through the light haze of evening I saw a strip of
+the straight white road leading  eastward across the level land. At
+the beginning of it there was a broken bridge; in places it seemed
+torn up by shells; it disappeared in the violet dusk.  But as I
+looked a vision came.
+
+The bridge is restored, the road mended and built up, and on that
+highway rides the King in his faded uniform with the Queen in white
+beside him.  At their approach ruined villages rejoice aloud and
+ancient towns break forth into singing.
+
+In Bruges the royal comrades stand beside the  gigantic monument
+in the centre of the Great Market, and above the shouting of the
+multitude the music of the old belfry floats unheard. Ghent and
+Antwerp have put on their glad raiment, and in their crooked streets
+and crowded squares joy flows like a river surging as it goes. Into
+Brussels I see this man and woman ride through a welcome that rises
+around them like the voice of many waters--the welcome of those
+who have waited and suffered, the welcome of those to whom liberty
+and honor were more dear than life. In the _Grande Place,_
+the antique, carven, gabled houses are gay with fluttering banners;
+the  people delivered from the cruel invader sing lustily  the
+_Marseillaise_ and the old songs of Belgium.
+
+In the midst, Albert and Elizabeth sit quietly upon their horses.
+They have come home. Not by the low road of cowardly surrender; not
+by the crooked road of compromise and falsehood; not by the soft
+road of ease and self-indulgence; but by the straight road of faith
+and courage and self-sacrifice--the King's High Way.
+
+
+
+
+
+HALF-TOLD TALES
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAITOR IN THE HOUSE
+
+
+The Guest, who came from beyond the lake, had lived in the house
+for years and had the freedom of it, so that he had become quite
+like a member of the family. He was friendly treated and well lodged.
+Indeed, some thought he had the best room of all, for though it
+was in the wing, it was spacious and well warmed, and had a side
+door, so that he could go in and out freely by day or night.
+
+It must be said that he had earned his living on the place, being
+industrious and useful, a very handy man about the house; and the
+children had a liking for him because he sang merry songs and told
+beautiful fairy-tales.
+
+So he was all the more surprised and aggrieved when the Master of
+the house said to him one night, as they sat late by the fire:
+
+"I suspect you."
+
+"But of what?" cried the Guest.
+
+"Of caring more for the house that you came from than for the house
+that you live in."
+
+"But you know I was at home there once," said the Guest, "would
+you have me forget that? Surely you will not deny me the freedom
+of my thoughts and memories and fond feelings. Would you make me
+less than a man?"
+
+"No," said the Master, "but I will ask you to choose between your
+old home and your new home now. The house in which you lived formerly
+is become our enemy--a nest of brigands and bloody men. They have
+killed a child of ours on the  highway. They threaten us to-night
+with an attack in force. Tell me plainly where you stand."
+
+The Guest looked down his nose toward the smouldering  embers of the
+fire. He knocked out the dottle of his  pipe on one of the andirons.
+Two fat tears rolled down  his cheeks; he was very sentimental.
+
+"I am with you," he said.
+
+"Good," said the Master, "now let us make the house fast!"
+[Illustration with caption: 'I will ask you to choose between your
+old home and your new home now']
+
+So they closed and barred the shutters and locked and bolted the
+front door.
+
+Then they lighted their bedroom candles and bade each other good
+night.
+
+But as the Guest went along his dim corridor, the Master turned
+and followed him very softly on tiptoe, watching.
+
+Outside the house, in the darkness, there was a sound of many
+shuffling feet and whispering voices.
+
+When the Guest came to the side door he tried the latch, to see
+that it was working freely. He moved the bolt, not forward into
+its socket, but backward so that it should be no hindrance. In
+the window beside the doorway he set his candle.  So the house was
+ready for late-comers.
+
+Then the Guest sighed a little. "They are my old friends," he
+murmured, "my dear old friends!  I could not leave them out in the
+cold. I am not responsible for what they do. Only I must my old
+affection prove." So he sighed again and turned softly to his bed.
+
+But as he turned the Master stood before him and took him by the
+throat.
+
+"Traitor!" he cried. "You would betray the innocent. Already your
+soul is stained with my sleeping children's blood." And with his
+hands he choked the false Guest to death.
+
+Then he shot the bolt of the side door, and barred the window, and
+called the servants, and made ready to defend the house.
+
+Great was the fighting that night. In the morning,  when the robbers
+were driven off, the false Guest  was buried, outside the garden,
+in an unmarked grave.
+
+February 2, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JUSTICE OF THE ELEMENTS
+
+
+So the Criminal with a Crown came to the end of his resources. He
+had told his last lie, but not even his servants would believe it.
+He had made his last threat, but no living soul feared it. He had
+put forth his last stroke of violence and cruelty, but it fell
+short.
+
+When he saw his own image reflected in the eyes of men, and knew
+what he had done to the world and what had come of his evil design,
+he was afraid, and cried, "Let the Earth swallow me!" And the Earth
+opened, and swallowed him.
+
+But so great was the harm that he had wrought upon the Earth, and
+so deeply had he drenched it with blood, that it could not contain
+him. So the Earth opened again, and spewed him forth.
+
+Then he cried, "Let the Sea hide me!" And the waves rolled over
+his head.
+
+But the Sea, whereon he had wrought iniquity, and filled the depths
+thereof with the bones of the innocent, could not endure him and
+threw him up on the shore as refuse.
+
+Then he cried, "Let the Air carry me away!" And the strong winds
+blew, and lifted him up so that he felt exalted.
+
+But the pure Air, wherein he had let loose the vultures of hate,
+dropping death upon helpless women and harmless babes, found the
+burden and the stench of him intolerable, and let him fall.
+
+And as he was falling he cried, "Let the Fire give me a refuge!"
+So the Fire, wherewith he had consumed the homes of men, rejoiced;
+and the flames which he had compelled to do his will in wickedness
+leaped up as he drew near.
+
+"Welcome, old master!" roared the Fire. "Be my slave!"
+
+Then he perceived that there was no hope for him in the justice of
+the elements. And he said, "I will seek mercy of Him against whom
+I have most offended."
+
+So he fled to the foot of the Great White Throne.  And as he kneeled
+there, broken and abased, the world was silent, waiting for the
+sentence of the Judge of All.
+
+August, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ASHES OF VENGEANCE
+
+
+Dun was a hard little city, proud and harsh; but impregnable
+because it was built upon a high rock.  The host of the Visigoths
+had besieged it for months in vain. Then came a fugitive from the
+city, at midnight,  to the tent of Alaric, the Chief of the besiegers.
+
+The man was haggard and torn. His eyes were wild, his hands trembling.
+The Chief held and steadied him with a look.
+
+"Who are you?" he asked. "Your name, the purpose that brings you
+here?"
+
+"My name," said the man, "is the Avenger.  For thirty years I have
+lived in Dun, and the people have been unjust and cruel to me.
+They persecuted my family, because they hated me. My wife died of
+a broken heart, my children of starvation. I have just escaped from
+the prison of Dun, and come to tell you how the city may be taken.
+There is a secret pathway, a hidden entrance. I know it and can
+reveal it to you."
+
+"Good," said the Chief, measuring the man with tranquil eyes, "but
+what is your price?"
+
+"Vengeance," said the man, "I ask only the right  to revenge my
+sufferings upon those who have  inflicted them, when you have taken
+the city."
+
+Alaric bent his head and was silent for a moment.  "It is a fair
+price," he said, "and I will pay it. Tell me the way to take the
+city, and I will leave at your command a troop of soldiers sufficient
+to work your will on it afterward."
+
+II
+
+The trumpet sounded the capture of the city in the morning. The
+Avenger, waking late from his troubled sleep, led his soldiers
+through the  open gate.
+
+It was like a city of the dead, and the bodies of those who had been
+killed in the last defense, lay where they had fallen. Empty and
+silent were the streets where lie had so often walked in humiliation.
+Gone were the familiar faces that had frowned on him and mocked
+him. The houses at whose doors he had often knocked were vacant.
+His wrath sank within him, and the arrow of solitude pierced him
+to the heart.
+
+Then he came to the belfry, and there was the bell-ringer, one of
+the worst of his ancient  persecutors, standing at the entrance of
+the tower.
+
+"Why are you here?" said the Avenger.
+
+"By the orders of King Alaric," answered the bell-ringer, "to ring
+the bells when peace comes to the city."
+
+"Ring now," said the Avenger, "ring now!"
+
+Then, at the sound of the bells, the people who had concealed themselves
+at Alaric's command came trooping forth from the cellars and caves
+where they had been hiding,--old men and women and children, a
+motley throng of sufferers.
+
+The Avenger looked at them and the tears ran down his cheeks,
+because he remembered.
+
+"Listen," he said, "don't be afraid. These soldiers  are going on
+to join their army. You have done me great wrong. But the fire of
+hatred is burnt out, and in the ashes of vengeance we are going to
+plant the seeds of peace."
+
+December, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BROKEN SOLDIER AND THE MAID OF FRANCE
+
+
+
+
+I. THE MEETING AT THE SPRING
+
+
+Along the old Roman road that crosses the rolling  hills from the
+upper waters of the Marne to the  Meuse a soldier of France was
+passing in the night.
+
+In the broader pools of summer moonlight he showed as a hale and
+husky fellow of about thirty years, with dark hair and eyes and
+a handsome, downcast face. His uniform was faded and dusty; not a
+trace of the horizon blue was left, only a gray shadow. He had no
+knapsack on his back, no gun on his shoulder. Wearily and doggedly
+he plodded his way, without eyes for the veiled beauty of the sleeping
+country. The quick, firm military step was gone. He trudged like
+a tramp, choosing always  the darker side of the road.
+
+He was a figure of flight, a broken soldier.
+
+Presently the road led him into a thick forest of oaks and beeches,
+and so to the crest of a hill  overlooking a long open valley with
+wooded heights  beyond. Below him was the pointed spire of some
+temple or shrine, lying at the edge of the wood, with no houses
+near it. Farther down he could see a cluster of white houses with
+the tower of a church in the centre. Other villages were dimly
+visible up and down the valley on either slope.  The cattle were
+lowing from the barnyards. The cocks crowed for the dawn. Already
+the moon had sunk behind the western trees. But the valley was
+still bathed in its misty, vanishing light. Over the eastern ridge
+the gray glimmer of the little day was rising, faintly tinged with
+rose. It was time for the broken soldier to seek his covert and
+rest till night returned.
+
+So he stepped aside from the road and found a little dell thick
+with underwoods, and in it a clear spring gurgling among the ferns
+and mosses. Around the opening grew wild gooseberries and golden
+broom and a few tall spires of purple foxglove.  He drew off his
+dusty boots and socks and bathed his feet in a small pool, drying
+them with fern leaves. Then he took a slice of bread and a piece of
+cheese from his pocket and made his breakfast.  Going to the edge
+of the thicket, he parted the branches and peered out over the
+vale.
+
+Its eaves sloped gently to the level floor where the river loitered
+in loops and curves. The sun was just topping the eastern hills;
+the heads of the trees were dark against a primrose sky.
+
+In the fields the hay had been cut and gathered.  The aftermath
+was already greening the moist places. Cattle and sheep sauntered
+out to pasture.  A thin silvery mist floated here and there,
+spreading  in broad sheets over the wet ground and shredding into
+filmy scarves and ribbons as the breeze caught it among the pollard
+willows and poplars on the border of the stream. Far away the water
+glittered where the river made a sudden bend or a long smooth reach.
+It was like the flashing of distant shields. Overhead a few white
+clouds climbed up from the north. The rolling ridges, one after
+another, enfolded the valley as far as eye could see; dark green
+set in pale green, with here and there an arm of forest running
+down on a sharp promontory to meet and turn the meandering stream.
+
+"It must be the valley of the Meuse," said the soldier. "My faith,
+but France is beautiful and tranquil here!"
+
+The northerly wind was rising. The clouds climbed more swiftly.
+The poplars shimmered, the willows glistened, the veils of mist
+vanished. From very far away there came a rumbling thunder, heavy,
+insistent, continuous, punctuated with louder crashes.
+
+"It is the guns," muttered the soldier, shivering.  "It is the guns
+around Verdun! Those damned Boches!"
+
+He turned back into the thicket and dropped among the ferns beside
+the spring. Stretching himself  with a gesture of abandon, he
+pillowed his face on his crossed arms to sleep.
+
+A rustling in the bushes roused him. He sprang to his feet quickly.
+It was a priest, clad in a dusty cassock, his long black beard
+streaked with gray.  He came slowly treading up beside the trickling
+rivulet, carrying a bag on a stick over his shoulder.
+
+"Good morning, my son," he said. "You have chosen a pleasant spot
+to rest."
+
+The soldier, startled, but not forgetting his manners  learned from
+boyhood, stood up and lifted his hand to take off his cap. It was
+already lying on the ground. "Good morning, Father," he answered,
+"I did not choose the place, but stumbled on it by chance. It is
+pleasant enough, for I am very tired and have need of sleep."
+
+"No doubt," said the priest. "I can see that you look weary, and
+I beg you to pardon me if I have interrupted your repose. But why
+do you say you came here 'by chance'? If you are a good Christian
+you know that nothing is by chance.  All is ordered and designed
+by Providence."
+
+"So they told me in church long ago," said the soldier coldly; "but
+now it does not seem so true--at least not with me."
+
+The first feeling of friendliness and respect into which he had
+been surprised was passing. He had fallen back into the mood of
+his journey--mistrust, secrecy, resentment.
+
+The priest caught the tone. His gray eyes under  their bushy brows
+looked kindly but searchingly at the soldier and smiled a little.
+He set down his bag and leaned on his stick. "Well," he said, "I
+can tell you one thing, my son. At all events it was not chance
+that brought me here. I came with a purpose."
+
+The soldier started a little, stung by suspicion.  "What then," he
+cried, roughly, "were you looking for me? What do you know of me?
+What is this talk of chance and purpose?"
+
+"Come, come," said the priest, his smile spreading  from his eyes
+to his lips, "do not be angry. I assure you that I know nothing of
+you whatever, not even your name nor why you are here. When I said
+that I came with a purpose I meant only that a certain thought, a
+wish, led me to this spot. Let us sit together awhile beside the
+spring and make better acquaintance."
+
+"I do not desire it," said the soldier, with a frown.
+
+"But you will not refuse it?" queried the priest gently. "It is
+not good to refuse the request of one old enough to be your father.
+Look, I have here some excellent tobacco and cigarette-papers.  Let
+us sit down and smoke together. I will tell you who I am and the
+purpose that brought me here."
+
+The soldier yielded grudgingly, not knowing what else to do. They
+sat down on a mossy bank beside the spring, and while the blue
+smoke of their cigarettes went drifting under the little trees the
+priest began:
+
+"My name is Antoine Courcy. I am the cure of Darney, a village
+among the Reaping Hook Hills, a few leagues south from here.
+For twenty-five years I have reaped the harvest of heaven in that
+blessed little field. I am sorry to leave it. But now this war,
+this great battle for freedom and the life of France, calls me.
+It is a divine vocation.  France has need of all her sons to-day,
+even the old ones. I cannot keep the love of God in my heart unless
+I follow the love of country in my life. My younger brother, who
+used to be the priest of the next parish to mine, was in the army.
+He has fallen.  I am going to replace him. I am on my way to join
+the troops--as a chaplain, if they will; if not, then as a private.
+I must get into the army of France or be left out of the host of
+heaven."
+
+The soldier had turned his face away and was plucking the lobes
+from a frond of fern. "A brave resolve, Father," he said, with an
+ironic note. "But you have not yet told me what brings you off your
+road, to this place."
+
+"I will tell you," replied the priest eagerly; "it is the love of
+Jeanne d'Arc, the Maid who saved France long ago. You know about
+her?"
+
+"A little," nodded the soldier. "I have learned in the school. She
+was a famous saint."
+
+"Not yet a saint," said the priest earnestly; "the Pope has not yet
+pronounced her a saint. But it will be done soon. Already he has
+declared her among the Blessed Ones. To me she is the most blessed
+of all. She never thought of herself or of a saint's crown. She
+gave her life entire for France.  And this is the place that she
+came from! Think of that--right here!"
+
+"I did not know that," said the soldier.
+
+"But yes," the priest went on, kindling. "I tell you it was here
+that the Maid of France received her visions and set out to her work.
+You see that village below us--look out through the branches--that
+is Domremy, where she was born. That spire just at the edge of
+the wood--you saw that? It is the basilica they have built to her
+memory. It is full of pictures of her. It stands where the old
+beech-tree, 'Fair May,' used to grow. There she heard the voices
+and saw the saints who sent her on her mission. And this is the
+Gooseberry Spring, the Well of the Good Fairies. Here she came
+with the other children, at the festival of the well-dressing, to
+spread their garlands around it, and sing, and cat their supper
+on the green. Heavenly voices spoke to her, but the others did not
+hear them.  Often did she drink of this water. It became a fountain
+of life springing up in her heart. I have come to drink at the
+same source. It will strengthen me as a sacrament. Come, son, let
+us take it together  as we go to our duty in battle!"
+
+Father Courcy stood up and opened his old black bag. He took out
+a small metal cup. He filled it carefully at the spring. He made
+the sign of the cross over it.
+
+"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit," he murmured,
+"blessed and holy is this water." Then he held the cup toward the
+soldier.  "Come, let us share it and make our vows together."
+
+The bright drops trembled and fell from the bottom of the cup. The
+soldier sat still, his head in his hands.
+
+"No," he answered heavily, "I cannot take it.  I am not worthy.
+Can a man take a sacrament without confessing his sins?"
+
+Father Courcy looked at him with pitying eyes.  "I see," he said
+slowly; "I see, my son. You have a burden on your heart. Well, I
+will stay with you and try to lift it. But first I shall make my
+own vow."
+
+He raised the cup toward the sky. A tiny brown wren sang canticles
+of rapture in the thicket. A great light came into the priest's
+face--a sun-ray from the east, far beyond the treetops.
+
+"Blessed Jeanne d'Arc, I drink from thy fountain in  thy name. I vow
+my life to thy cause. Aid me, aid this my son, to fight valiantly
+for freedom and for France. In the name of God, Amen."
+
+The soldier looked up at him. Wonder, admiration,  and shame were
+struggling in the look. Father Courcy wiped the empty cup carefully
+and put it back in his bag. Then he sat down beside the soldier,
+laying a fatherly hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Now, my son, you shall tell me what is on your heart."
+
+
+
+
+II. THE GREEN CONFESSIONAL
+
+
+For a long time the soldier remained silent. His head was bowed.
+His shoulders drooped. His hands trembled between his knees. He
+was wrestling  with himself.
+
+"No," he cried, at last, "I cannot, I dare not tell you. Unless,
+perhaps"--his voice faltered--"you could receive it under the seal
+of confession? But no. How could you do that? Here in the green
+woods? In the open air, beside a spring? Here is no confessional."
+
+"Why not?" asked Father Courcy. "It is a good place, a holy place.
+Heaven is over our heads and very near. I will receive your confession
+here."
+
+The soldier knelt among the flowers. The priest pronounced the
+sacred words. The soldier began his confession:
+
+"I, Pierre Duval, a great sinner, confess my fault, my most grievous
+fault, and pray for pardon."  He stopped for a moment and then
+continued, "But  first I must tell you, Father, just who I am and
+where I come from and what brings me here."
+
+"Go on, Pierre Duval, go on. That is what I am waiting to hear. Be
+simple and very frank."
+
+"Well, then, I am from the parish of Laucourt, in the pleasant
+country of the Barrois not far from Bar-sur-Aube. My word, but that
+is a pretty land, full of orchards and berry-gardens! Our old farm
+there is one of the prettiest and one of the best, though it is
+small. It was hard to leave it when the call to the colors came,
+two years ago. But I was glad to go. My heart was high and strong
+for France.  I was in the Nth Infantry, We were in the centre division
+under General Foch at the battle of the Marne. _Fichtre!_ but
+that was fierce fighting! And what a general! He did not know how
+to spell 'defeat.'  He wrote it 'victory.' Four times we went across
+that cursed Marsh of St.-Gond. The dried mud was trampled full of
+dead bodies. The trickling  streams of water ran red. Four times
+we were thrown back by the boches. You would have thought that was
+enough. But the general did not think so. We went over again on
+the fifth day, and that time we stayed. The Germans could not stand
+against us. They broke and ran. The roads where we chased them
+were full of empty wine-bottles.  In one village we caught three
+officers and a dozen men dead drunk. _Bigre!_ what a fine
+joke!"
+
+Pierre, leaning back upon his heels, was losing himself in his
+recital. His face lighted up, his hands were waving. Father Courcy
+bent forward with shining eyes.
+
+"Continue," he cried. "This is a beautiful confession--no sin yet.
+Continue, Pierre."
+
+"Well, then, after that we were fighting here and there, on the
+Aisne, on the Ailette, everywhere.  Always the same story--Germans
+rolling down on us in flood, green-gray waves. But the foam on
+them was fire and steel. The shells of the barrage swept us like
+hailstones. We waited, waited in our trenches, till the green-gray
+mob was near enough.  Then the word came. _Sapristi!_ We let
+loose with mitrailleuse, rifle, field-gun, everything that would
+throw death. It did not seem like fighting with men. It was like
+trying to stop a monstrous thing, a huge, terrible mass that was
+rushing on to overwhelm  us. The waves tumbled and broke before
+they reached us. Sometimes they fell flat. Sometimes  they turned
+and rushed the other way. It was wild, wild, like a change of the
+wind and tide in a storm, everything torn and confused. Then perhaps
+the word came to go over the top and at them. That was furious.
+That was fighting with men, for sure--bayonet, revolver, rifle-butt,
+knife, anything that would kill. Often I sickened at the blood and
+the horror of it. But something inside of me shouted: 'Fight on!
+It is for France. It is for "L'Alouette" thy farm; for thy wife,
+thy little ones. Will you let them be ruined by those beasts of
+Germans? What are they doing here on French soil? Brigands, butchers,
+apaches! Drive them out; and if they will not go, kill them so they
+can do no more shameful deeds. Fight on!' So I killed all I could."
+
+The priest nodded his head grimly. "You were right, Pierre; your
+voice spoke true. It was a  dreadful duty that you were doing. The
+Gospel tells us if we are smitten on one cheek we must turn the
+other. But it does not tell us to turn the cheek of a little child,
+of the woman we love, the country we belong to. No! that would
+be disgraceful, wicked, un-Christian. It would be to betray the
+innocent!  Continue, my son."
+
+"Well, then," Pierre went on, his voice deepening and his face
+growing more tense, "then we were sent to Verdun. That was the
+hottest place of all.  It was at the top of the big German drive.
+The whole sea rushed and fell on us--big guns, little guns, poison-gas,
+hand-grenades, liquid fire,  bayonets, knives, and trench-clubs.
+Fort after fort went down. The whole pack of hell was loose and
+raging. I thought of that crazy, chinless Crown Prince sitting in
+his safe little cottage hidden in the woods somewhere--they say he
+had flowers and vines planted around it--drinking stolen champagne
+and sicking on his dogs of death. He was in no danger. I cursed
+him in my heart, that blood-lord! The shells rained on Verdun. The
+houses were riddled; the cathedral was pierced in a dozen places;
+a hundred fires broke out. The old citadel held good. The outer forts
+to the north and east were taken. Only the last ring was left. We
+common soldiers did not know much about what was happening. The big
+battle was beyond our horizon. But that General Petain, he knew it
+all.  Ah, that is a wise man, I can tell you! He sent us to this
+place or that place where the defense was most needed. We went
+gladly, without fear or holding back. We were resolute that those
+mad dogs should not get through. _'They shall not pass'!_ And
+they did not pass!"
+
+"Glorious!" cried the priest, drinking the story in. "And you,
+Pierre? Where were you, what were you doing?"
+
+"I was at Douaumont, that fort on the highest hill of all. The
+Germans took it. It cost them ten thousand men. The ground around
+it was like a wood-yard piled with logs. The big shell-holes were
+full of corpses. There were a few of us that got away. Then our
+company was sent to hold the third redoubt on the slope in front of
+Port de Vaux. Perhaps you have heard of that redoubt.  That was a
+bitter job. But we held it many days and nights. The boches pounded
+us from Douaumont  and from the village of Vaux. They sent wave
+after wave up the slope to drive us out. But we stuck to it. That
+ravine of La Caillette was a boiling caldron of men. It bubbled
+over with smoke and fire. Once, when their second wave had broken
+just in front of us, we went out to hurry the  fragments down
+the hill. Then the guns from Douaumont  and the village of Vaux
+hammered us. Our men fell like ninepins. Our lieutenant called to
+us to turn back. Just then a shell tore away his right leg at the
+knee. It hung by the skin and tendons.  He was a brave lad. I could
+not leave him to die there. So I hoisted him on my back. Three
+shots struck me. They felt just like hard blows from a heavy fist.
+One of them made my left arm powerless.  I sank my teeth in the
+sleeve of my lieutenant's coat as it hung over my shoulder. I must
+not let him fall off my back. Somehow--God knows how--I gritted
+through to our redoubt. They took my lieutenant from my shoulders.
+And then the light went out."
+
+The priest leaned forward, his hands stretched out around the
+soldier. "But you are a hero," he cried. "Let me embrace you!"
+
+The soldier drew back, shaking his head sadly.  "No," he said,
+his voice breaking--"no, my Father, you must not embrace me now.
+I may have been a brave man once. But now I am a coward. Let me
+tell you everything. My wounds were bad, but not desperate. The
+_brancardiers_ carried me down to Verdun, at night I suppose,
+but I was unconscious; and so to the hospital at Vaudelaincourt.
+There were days and nights of blankness mixed with pain.  Then I
+came to my senses and had rest. It was wonderful. I thought that I
+had died and gone to heaven. Would God it had been so! Then I should
+have been with my lieutenant. They told me he had passed away in
+the redoubt. But that hospital was beautiful, so clean and quiet
+and friendly. Those white nurses were angels. They handled me like
+a baby. I would have liked to stay there. I had no desire to get
+better. But I did. One day several officers visited the hospital.
+They came to my cot, where I was sitting up. The highest of
+them brought out a Cross of War and pinned it on the breast of my
+nightshirt. 'There,' he said, 'you are decorated, Pierre Duval! You
+are one of the heroes of France. You are soon going to be perfectly
+well and to fight again bravely for your country.' I thanked him,
+but I knew better.  My body might get perfectly well, but something
+in my soul was broken. It was worn out. The thin spring had snapped.
+I could never fight again.  Any loud noise made me shake all over.
+I knew that I could never face a battle--impossible! I should
+certainly lose my nerve and run away. It is a damned feeling, that
+broken something inside of one. I can't describe it."
+
+Pierre stopped for a moment and moistened his dry lips with the
+tip of his tongue.
+
+"I know," said Father Courcy. "I understand perfectly what you want
+to say. It was like being lost and thinking that nothing could save
+you; a feeling that is piercing and dull at the same time, like a
+heavy weight pressing on you with sharp stabs in it. It was what
+they call shell-shock, a terrible thing. Sometimes it drives men
+crazy for a while. But the doctors know what to do for that malady.
+It passes. You got over it."
+
+"No," answered Pierre, "the doctors may not have known that I had
+it. At all events, they did not know what to do for it. It did
+not pass. It grew worse. But I hid it, talking very little, never
+telling anybody how I felt. They said I was  depressed and needed
+cheering up. All the while there was that black snake coiled around
+my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter. But my body grew stronger
+every day. The wounds were all healed.  I was walking around. In
+July the doctor-in-chief sent for me to his office. He said: 'You
+are cured, Pierre Duval, but you are not yet fit to fight. You are
+low in your mind. You need cheering up. You are to have a month's
+furlough and repose. You shall go home to your farm. How is it that
+you call it?' I suppose I had been babbling about it in my sleep
+and one of the nurses had told him.  He was always that way, that
+little Doctor Roselly, taking an interest in the men, talking
+with them and acting friendly. I said the farm was called
+_'L'Alouette'_--rather a foolish name. 'Not, at all,' he
+answered; 'it is a fine name, with the song of a bird in it. Well,
+you are going back to _"L'Alouette"_ to hear the lark sing for
+a month, to kiss your wife and your children, to pick gooseberries
+and currants.  Eh, my boy, what do you think of that?  Then, when
+the month is over, you will be a new man. You will be ready to fight
+again at Verdun.  Remember they have not passed and they shall not
+pass! Good luck to you, Pierre Duval.' So I went back to the farm
+as fast as I could go."
+
+He was silent for a few moments, letting his thoughts wander through
+the pleasant paths of that little garden of repose. His eyes were
+dreaming, his lips almost smiled.
+
+"It was sweet at _'L'Alouette,'_ very sweet, Father.  The
+farm was in pretty good order and the kitchen-garden was all right,
+though, the flowers had been a little neglected. You see, my wife,
+Josephine, she is a very clever woman. She had kept up the things
+that were the most necessary. She had hired one of the old neighbors
+and a couple of boys to help her with the ploughing and planting.
+The harvest she sold as it stood. Our yoke of cream-colored oxen
+and the roan horse were in good condition.  Little Pierrot, who is
+five, and little Josette, who is  three, were as brown as berries.
+They hugged me almost to death. But it was Josephine herself who was
+the best of all. She is only twenty-six, Father, and so beautiful
+still, with her long chestnut hair and her eyes like stones shining
+under the waters of a brook. I tell you it was good to get her in
+my arms again and feel her lips on mine.  And to wake in the early
+morning, while the birds were singing, and see her face beside me
+on the white pillow, sleeping like a child, that was a little bit
+of Paradise. But I do wrong to tell you of all this, Father."
+
+"Proceed, my big boy," nodded the priest.  "You are saying nothing
+wrong. I was a man before I was a priest. It is all natural, what
+you are saying, and all according to God's law--no sin in it.
+Proceed. Did your happiness do you good?" Pierre shook his head
+doubtfully. The look of dejection came back to his face. He frowned
+as if something puzzled and hurt him. "Yes and no.  That is the
+strange thing. It made me thankful--that goes without saying. But
+it did not make me any stronger in my heart. Perhaps it was too
+sweet.  I thought too much of it. I could not bear to think of
+anything else. The idea of the war was hateful, horrible, disgusting.
+The noise and the dirt of it, the mud in the autumn and the bitter
+cold in the winter, the rats and the lice in the dugouts, And then
+the fury of the charge, and the everlasting killing, killing, or
+being killed! The danger had seemed little or nothing to me when
+I was there.  But at a distance it was frightful, unendurable.  I
+knew that I could never stand up to it again.  Besides, already I
+had done my share--enough for two or three men. Why must I go back
+into that hell? It was not fair. Life was too dear to be risking
+it all the time. I could not endure it.  France? France? Of course
+I love France. But my farm and my life with Josephine and the
+children mean more to me. The thing that made me a good soldier is
+broken inside me. It is beyond mending."
+
+His voice sank lower and lower. Father Courcy looked at him gravely.
+
+"But your farm is a part of France. You belong to  France. He that
+saveth his life shall lose it!"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. But my farm is such a small part of France.
+I am only one man. What difference  does one man make, except to
+himself? Moreover,  I had done my part, that was certain. Twenty
+times, really, my life had been lost. Why must I throw it away
+again? Listen, Father. There is a village in the Vosges, near the
+Swiss border, where a relative of mine lives. If I could get to
+him he would take me in and give me some other clothes and help me
+over the frontier into Switzerland.  There I could change my name
+and find work until the war is over. That was my plan. So I set
+out on my journey, following the less-travelled roads, tramping by
+night and sleeping by day. Thus I came to this spring at the same
+time as you by chance, by pure chance. Do you see?"
+
+Father Courcy looked very stern and seemed about to speak in anger.
+Then he shook his head, and said quietly: "No, I do not see that
+at all.  It remains to be seen whether it was by chance.  But tell
+me more about your sin. Did you let your wife, Josephine, know
+what you were going to do?  Did you tell her good-by, parting for
+Switzerland?"
+
+"Why, no! I did not dare. She would never have forgiven me.
+So I slipped down to the post-office at Bar-sur-Aube and stole
+a telegraph blank.  It was ten days before my furlough was out. I
+wrote a message to myself calling me back to the colors at once.
+I showed it to her. Then I said good-by. I wept. She did not cry
+one tear. Her eyes were stars. She embraced me a dozen times.  She
+lifted up each of the children to hug me. Then she cried: 'Go now,
+my brave man. Fight well.  Drive the damned boches out. It is for
+us and for France. God protect you. _Au revoir!'_ I went down
+the road silent. I felt like a dog. But I could not help it."
+
+"And you were a dog," said the priest sternly.  "That is what you
+were, and what you remain unless you can learn to help it. You lied
+to your wife. You forged; you tricked her who trusted you. You have
+done the thing which you yourself  say she would never forgive.
+If she loves you and prays for you now, you have stolen that love
+and that prayer. You are a thief. A true daughter of France could
+never love a coward to-day."
+
+"I know, I know," sobbed Pierre, burying his face in the weeds.
+"Yet I did it partly for her, and I could not do otherwise."
+
+"Very little for her, and a hundred times for yourself," said
+the priest indignantly. "Be honest.  If there was a little bit of
+love for her, it was the kind of love she did not want. She would
+spit upon it. If you are going to Switzerland now you are leaving
+her forever. You can never go back to Josephine again. You are a
+deserter. She would cast you out, coward!"
+
+The broken soldier lay very still, almost as if he were dead. Then
+he rose slowly to his feet, with a pale, set face. He put his hand
+behind his back and drew out a revolver. "It is true," he said
+slowly, "I am a coward. But not altogether such a coward as you
+think, Father. It is not merely death that I fear. I could face
+that, I think.  Here, take this pistol and shoot me now! No one
+will know. You can say you shot a deserter, or that I attacked you.
+Shoot me now, Father, and let me out of this trouble."
+
+Father Courcy looked at him with amazement.  Then he took the pistol,
+uncocked it cautiously, and dropped it behind him. He turned to
+Pierre and regarded him curiously. "Go on with your confession,
+Pierre. Tell me about this strange kind of cowardice which can face
+death."
+
+The soldier dropped on his knees again, and went on in a low,
+shaken voice: "It is this, Father. By my broken soul, this is the
+very root of it. I am afraid of fear."
+
+The priest thought for an instant. "But that is not reasonable,
+Pierre. It is nonsense. Fear cannot  hurt you. If you fight it you
+can conquer it.  At least you can disregard it, march through it,
+as if it were not there."
+
+"Not this fear," argued the soldier, with a peasant's  obstinacy.
+"This is something very big and dreadful. It has no shape, but
+a dead-white face and red, blazing eyes full of hate and scorn. I
+have seen it in the dark. It is stronger than I am.  Since something
+is broken inside of me, I know I can never conquer it. No, it would
+wrap its shapeless  arms around me and stab me to the heart with
+its fiery eyes. I should turn and run in the middle of the battle.
+I should trample on my wounded comrades. I should be shot in the
+back and die in disgrace. O my God! my God! who can save me from
+this? It is horrible. I cannot bear it."
+
+The priest laid his hand gently on Pierre's  quivering shoulder.
+"Courage, my son!"
+
+"I have none."
+
+"Then say to yourself that fear is nothing."
+
+"It would be a lie. This fear is real."
+
+"Then cease to tremble at it; kill it."
+
+"Impossible. I am afraid of fear."
+
+"Then carry it as your burden, your cross. Take it back to Verdun
+with you."
+
+"I dare not. It would poison the others. It would bring me to
+dishonor."
+
+"Pray to God for help."
+
+"He will not answer me. I am a wicked man.  Father, I have made my
+confession. Will you give me a penance and absolve me?"
+
+"Promise to go back to the army and fight as well as you can."
+
+"Alas! that is what I cannot do. My mind is shaken to pieces.
+Whither shall I turn? I can decide nothing. I am broken. I repent
+of my great sin. Father, for the love of God, speak the word of
+absolution."
+
+Pierre lay on his face, motionless, his arms stretched out. The
+priest rose and went to the spring. He scooped up a few drops in
+the hollow of his hand. He sprinkled it like holy water upon the
+soldier's head. A couple of tears fell with it.
+
+"God have pity on you, my son, and bring you back to yourself.
+The word of absolution is not for me to speak while you think of
+forsaking France.  Put that thought away from you, do penance for
+it, and you will be absolved from your great sin."
+
+Pierre turned over and lay looking up at the priest's face and at
+the blue sky with white cloude drifting across it. He sighed. "Ah,
+if that could only be! But I have not the strength. It is impossible."
+
+"All things are possible to him that believeth.  Strength will
+come. Perhaps Jeanne d'Arc herself will help you."
+
+"She would never speak to a man like me. She is a great saint, very
+high in heaven."
+
+"She was a farmer's lass, a peasant like yourself.  She would
+speak to you, gladly and kindly, if you saw her, and in your own
+language, too. Trust her."
+
+"But I do not know enough about her."
+
+"Listen, Pierre. I have thought for you. I will appoint the first
+part of your penance. You shall take the risk of being recognized
+and caught. You shall go down to the village and visit the places
+that belong to her--her basilica, her house, her church. Then you
+shall come back here and wait until you know--until you surely know
+what you must do. Will you promise this?"
+
+Pierre had risen and looked up at the priest with tear-stained
+face. But his eyes were quieter. "Yes, Father, I can promise you
+this much faithfully."
+
+"Now I must go my way. Farewell, my son.  Peace in war be with
+you." He held out his hand.
+
+Pierre took it reverently. "And with you, Father," he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+III. THE ABSOLVING DREAM
+
+
+Antoine Courcy was one of those who are fitted and trained by nature
+for the cure of souls. If you had spoken to him of psychiatry he
+would not have understood you. The long word would have been Greek
+to him. But the thing itself he knew well.  The preliminary penance
+which he laid upon Pierre Duval was remedial. It belonged to the
+true healing  art which works first in the spirit.
+
+When the broken soldier went down the hill, in the blaze of the
+mid-morning sunlight, toward Domremy,  there was much misgiving and
+confusion in his thoughts. He did not comprehend why he was going,
+except that he had promised. He was not sure that some one might
+not know him, or perhaps out of mere curiosity stop him and question
+him.  It was a reluctant journey.
+
+Yet it was in effect an unconscious pilgrimage to the one health-resort
+that his soul needed. For Domremy and the region round about are
+saturated with the most beautiful story of France. The life of Jeanne
+d'Arc, simple and mysterious, humble and glorious, most human and
+most heavenly, flows under that place like a hidden stream, rising
+at every turn in springs and fountains. The poor little village
+lives in and for her memory. Her presence haunts the ridges and
+the woods, treads the green pastures, follows the white road beside
+the river, and breathes in the never-resting valley-wind that
+marries the flowers in June and spreads their seed in August.
+
+At the small basilica built to her memory on the place where her
+old beech-tree, "Fair May," used to stand, there was an ancient
+caretaker who explained  to Pierre the pictures from the life of
+the Maid with which the walls are decorated. They are stiff and
+conventional, but the old man found them wonderful and told with
+zest the story of _La Pucelle_--how she saw her first vision;
+how she recognized the Dauphin in his palace at Chinon; how she
+broke the siege of Orleans; how she saw Charles crowned in the
+cathedral at Rheims; how she was burned at the stake in Rouen. But
+they could not kill her soul. She saved France.
+
+In the village church there was a priest from the border of Alsace,
+also a pilgrim like Pierre, but one who knew the shrine better.
+He showed the difference  between the new and the old parts of the
+building.  Certain things the Maid herself had seen and touched.
+
+"Here is the old holy-water basin, an antique, broken column hollowed
+out on top. Here her fingers must have rested often. Before this
+ancient statue of St. Michel she must have often knelt to say her
+prayers. The cure of the parish was a friend of hers and loved to
+talk with her. She was a good girl, devout and obedient, not learned,
+but a holy and great soul. She saved France."
+
+In the house where she was born and passed her childhood a crippled
+old woman was custodian. It was a humble dwelling of plastered
+stone standing between two tall fir-trees, with ivy growing over
+the walls, lilies and hollyhocks blooming in the  garden. Pierre
+found it not half so good a house as _"L'Alouette."_ But to
+the custodian it was more precious than a palace. In this upper
+room with its low mullioned window the Maid began her life.  Here,
+in the larger room below, is the kneeling statue which the Princess
+Marie d'Orleans made of her.  Here, to the right, under the sloping
+roof, with its worm-eaten beams, she slept and prayed and worked.
+
+"See, here is the bread-board between two timbers  where she cut
+the bread for the _croute au pot._ From this small window she
+looked at night and saw the sanctuary light burning in the church.
+Here, also, as well as in the garden and in the woods, her heavenly
+voices spoke to her and told her what she must do for her king and
+her country. She was not afraid or ashamed, though she lived in
+so small a house. Here in this very room she braided her hair and
+put on her red dress, and set forth on foot for her visit to Robert
+de Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs. He was a rough man and at first he
+received her roughly. But at last she convinced him. He gave her
+a horse and arms and sent her to the king.  She saved France."
+
+At the rustic inn Pierre ate thick slices of dark bread and drank
+a stoup of thin red wine at noon.  He sat at a bare table in the
+corner of the room.  Behind him, at a table covered with a white
+cloth, two captains on furlough had already made their breakfast.
+They also were pilgrims, drawn to Domremy  by the love of Jeanne
+d'Arc. They talked of nothing else but of her. Yet their points of
+view were absolutely different.
+
+One of them, the younger, was short and swarthy, a Savoyard, the
+son of an Italian doctor at St. Jean de Maurienne. He was a sceptic;
+he believed in Jeanne, but not in the legends about her.
+
+"I tell you," said he eagerly, "she was one of the greatest among
+women. But all that about her 'voices' was illusion. The priests
+suggested it.  She had hallucinations. Remember her age when they
+began--just thirteen. She was clever and strong; doubtless she was
+pretty; certainly she was very courageous. She was only a girl.
+But she had a big, brave idea which possessed her--the liberation
+of her country. Pure? Yes. I am sure she was virtuous. Otherwise
+the troops would not have followed and obeyed her as they did.
+Soldiers are very quick about those things. They recognize and respect
+an honest woman. Several men were in love with her, I think. But
+she was _une nature froide._ The only thing that moved her
+was her big, brave idea--to save France. The Maid was a mother, but
+not of a mortal child. Her offspring  was the patriotism of France."
+
+The other captain was a man of middle age, from Lyons, the son of
+an architect. He was tall and pale and his large brown eyes had
+the tranquillity of a devout faith in them. He argued with quiet
+tenacity for his convictions.
+
+"You are right to believe in her," said he, "but I think you are
+mistaken to deny her 'voices.' They were as real as anything in
+her life. You credit her when she says that she was born here, that
+she went to Chinon and saw the king, that delivered Orleans.  Why
+not credit her when she says she heard God and the saints speaking
+to her? The proof of it was in what she did. Have you read the story
+of her trial? How clear and steady her answers were! The judges
+could not shake her. Yet at any moment she could have saved her
+life by denying  the 'voices.' It was because she knew, because
+she was sure, that she could not deny. Her vision was a part of
+her real life. She was the mother of French patriotism--yes. But
+she was also the daughter of true faith. That was her power."
+
+"Well," said the younger man, "she sacrificed herself  and she
+saved France. That was the great thing."
+
+"Yes," said the elder man, stretching his hand across the table
+to clasp the hand of his companion, "there is nothing greater than
+that. If we do that, God will forgive us all."
+
+They put on their caps to go. Pierre rose and stood at attention.
+They returned his salute with a friendly smile and passed out.
+
+After a few moments he finished his bread and wine, paid his score,
+and followed them. He watched them going down the village street
+toward the railway station. Then he turned and walked slowly back
+to the spring in the dell.
+
+The afternoon was hot, in spite of the steady breeze which came out
+of the north. The air felt as if it had passed through a furnace.
+The low, continuous thunder of the guns rolled up from Verdun,
+with now and then a sharper clap from St. Mihiel.
+
+Pierre was very tired. His head was heavy, his heart troubled. He
+lay down among the ferns, looking idly at the foxglove spires above
+him and turning over in his mind the things he had heard and seen
+at Domremy. Presently he fell into a  profound sleep.
+
+How long it was he could not tell, but suddenly he became aware
+of some one near him. He sprang up. A girl was standing beside the
+spring.
+
+She wore a bright-red dress and her feet were bare. Her black hair
+hung down her back. Her eyes were the color of a topaz. Her form was
+tall and straight. She carried a distaff under her arm and looked
+as if she had just come from following the sheep.
+
+"Good day, shepherdess," said Pierre. Then a strange thought struck
+him, and he fell on his knees.  "Pardon, lady," he stammered.
+"Forgive my rudeness.  You are of the high society of heaven, a
+saint.  You are called Jeanne d'Arc?"
+
+She nodded and smiled. "That is my name," said she. "Sometimes
+they call me _La Pucelle_, or the Maid of France. But you were
+right, I am a shepherdess, too. I have kept my father's sheep in
+the fields down there, and spun from the distaff while I watched
+them. I know how to sew and spin as well as any girl in the Barrois
+or Lorraine. Will you not stand up and talk with me?"
+
+Pierre rose, still abashed and confused. He did not quite understand
+how to take this strange  experience--too simple for a heavenly
+apparition, too real for a common dream. "Well, then," said he, "if
+you are a shepherdess, why are you here? There are no sheep here."
+
+"But yes. You are one of mine. I have come here to seek you."
+
+"Do you know me, then? How can I be one of yours?"
+
+"Because you are a soldier of France and you are in trouble."
+
+Pierre's head drooped. "A broken soldier," he muttered, "not fit
+to speak to you. I am running away because I am afraid of fear."
+
+She threw back her head and laughed. "You speak very bad French.
+There is no such thing as being afraid of fear. For if you are
+afraid of it, you hate it. If you hate it, you will have nothing
+to do with it. And if you have nothing to do with it, it cannot
+touch you; it is nothing."
+
+"But for you, a saint, it is easy to say that. You had no fear when
+you fought. You knew you would not be killed."
+
+"I was no more sure of that than the other soldiers.  Besides, when
+they bound me to the stake at Rouen and kindled the fire around me
+I knew very well that I should be killed. But there was no fear in
+it. Only peace."
+
+"Ah, you were strong, a warrior born. You were not wounded and
+broken."
+
+"Four times I was wounded," she answered gravely. "At Orleans a
+bolt went through my right shoulder. At Paris a lance tore my thigh.
+I never saw the blood of Frenchmen flow without feeling my heart
+stand still. I was not a warrior born. I knew not how to ride or
+fight. But I did it. What we must needs do that we can do. Soldier,
+do not look on the ground. Look up."
+
+Then a strange thing took place before his eyes.  A wondrous
+radiance, a mist of light, enveloped and hid the shepherdess. When
+it melted she was clad in shining armor, sitting on a white horse,
+and lifting a bare sword in her left hand.
+
+"God commands you," she cried. "It is for France. Be of good cheer.
+Do not retreat. The fort will soon be yours!"
+
+How should Pierre know that this was the cry with which the Maid
+had rallied her broken men at Orleans when the fort of _Les
+Tourelles_ fell? What he did know was that something seemed to
+spring up within him to answer that call. He felt that he would
+rather die than desert such a leader.
+
+The figure on the horse turned away as if to go.
+
+"Do not leave me," he cried, stretching out his hands to her. "Stay
+with me. I will obey you joyfully."
+
+She turned again and looked at him very earnestly.  Her eyes shone
+deep into his heart. "Here I cannot stay," answered a low, sweet,
+womanly voice. "It is late, and my other children need me."
+
+"But forgiveness? Can you give that to me--a coward?"
+
+"You are no coward. Your only fault was to doubt a brave man."
+
+"And my wife? May I go back and tell her?"
+
+"No, surely. Would you make her hear slander of the man she loves?
+Be what she believes you and she will be satisfied."
+
+"And the absolution, the word of peace? Will you speak that to me?"
+
+Her eyes shone more clearly; the voice sounded sweeter and steadier
+than ever. "After the penance comes the absolution. You will find
+peace only at the lance's point. Son of France, go, go, go!  I will
+help you. Go hardily to Verdun."
+
+Pierre sprang forward after the receding figure, tried to clasp
+the knee, the foot of the Maid. As he fell to the ground something
+sharp pierced his hand. It must be her spur, thought he.
+
+Then he was aware that his eyes were shut. He opened them and looked
+at his hand carefully.  There was only a scratch on it, and a tiny
+drop of blood. He had torn it on the thorns of the wild gooseberry-bushes.
+
+His head lay close to the clear pool of the spring.  He buried his
+face in it and drank deep. Then he sprang up, shaking the drops
+from his mustache, found his cap and pistol, and hurried up the
+glen toward the old Roman road.
+
+"No more of that damned foolishness about Switzerland," he said,
+aloud. "I belong to France.  I am going with the other boys to save
+her. I was born for that." He took off his cap and stood still for
+a moment. He spoke as if he were taking an oath. "By Jeanne d'Arc!"
+
+
+
+
+IV. THE VICTORIOUS PENANCE
+
+
+It never occurred to Pierre Duval, as he trudged those long kilometres
+toward the front, that he was doing a penance.
+
+The joy of a mind made up is a potent cordial.
+
+The greetings of comrades on the road put gladness  into his heart
+and strength into his legs.
+
+It was a hot and dusty journey, and a sober one.  But it was not
+a sad one. He was going toward that for which he was born. He was
+doing that which France asked of him, that which God told him to
+do. Josephine would be glad and proud of him. He would never be
+ashamed to meet her eyes.  As he went, alone or in company with
+others, he whistled and sang a bit. He thought of _"L'Alouette"_
+a good deal. But not too much. He thought also of the forts of
+Douaumont and Vaux.
+
+_"Dame!"_ he cried to himself. "If I could help to win them
+back again! That would be fine! How sick that would make those
+cursed boches and their knock-kneed Crown Prince!"
+
+At the little village of the headquarters behind Verdun he found
+many old friends and companions.  They greeted him with cheerful
+irony.
+
+"Behold the prodigal! You took your time about coming back, didn't
+you? Was the hospital to your taste, the nurses pretty? How is the
+wife? Any more children? How goes it, old man?"
+
+"No more children yet," he answered, grinning; "but all goes well.
+I have come back from a far country, but I find the pigs are still
+grunting. What have you done to our old cook?"
+
+"Nothing at all," was the joyous reply. "He tried to swim in his
+own soup and he was drowned."
+
+When Pierre reported to the officer of the day, that busy functionary
+consulted the record.
+
+"You are a day ahead of your time, Pierre Duval,"  he said, frowning
+slightly.
+
+"Yes, sir," answered the soldier. "It costs less to be a day ahead
+than a day too late."
+
+"That is well," said the officer, smiling in his red beard. "You
+will report to-morrow to your regiment at the citadel. You have a
+new colonel, but the regiment is busy in the old way."
+
+As Pierre saluted and turned to go out his eye caught the look
+of a general officer who stood near, watching. He was a square,
+alert, vigorous man, his face bronzed by the suns of many African
+campaigns,  his eyes full of intelligence, humor, and courage. It
+was Guillaumat, the new commander of the Army of Verdun.
+
+"You are prompt, my son," said he pleasantly, "but you must
+remember not to be in a hurry. You have been in hospital. Are you
+well again?  Nothing broken?"
+
+"Something was broken, my General," responded the soldier gravely,
+"but it is mended."
+
+"Good!" said the general. "Now for the front, to beat the Germans
+at their own game. We shall get them. It may be long, but we shall
+get them!"
+
+That was the autumn of the offensive of 1916, by which the French
+retook, in ten days, what it had cost the Germans many months to
+gain.
+
+Pierre was there in that glorious charge at the end of October which
+carried the heights of  Douaumont and took six thousand prisoners.
+He was there at the recapture of the Fort de Vaux which the Germans
+evacuated in the first week of November.  In the last rush up the
+slope, where he had fought long ago, a stray shell, an inscrutable
+messenger of fate, coming from far away, no one knows whence, caught
+him and ripped him horribly across the body.
+
+It was a desperate mass of wounds. But the men of his squad loved
+their corporal. He still breathed. They saw to it that he was carried
+back to the little transit hospital just behind the Fort de Souville.
+
+It was a rude hut of logs, covered with sand-bags, on the slope
+of the hill. The ruined woods around it were still falling to the
+crash of far-thrown shells.  In the close, dim shelter of the inner
+room Pierre came to himself.
+
+He looked up into the face of Father Courcy.  A light of recognition
+and gratitude flickered  in his eyes. It was like finding an old
+friend  in the dark.
+
+"Welcome!--But the fort?" he gasped.
+
+"It is ours," said the priest.
+
+Something like a smile passed over the face of Pierre. He could
+not speak for a long time. The blood in his throat choked him. At
+last he whispered:
+
+"Tell Josephine--love."
+
+Father Courcy bowed his head and took Pierre's hand. "Surely," he
+said. "But now, my dear son Pierre, I must prepare you--"
+
+The struggling voice from the cot broke in,  whispering slowly,
+with long intervals: "Not  necessary.... I know already.... The
+penance.  ... France.... Jeanned'Arc.... It is done."
+
+A few drops of blood gushed from the corner of his mouth. The
+look of peace that often comes to those who die of gunshot wounds
+settled on his face. His eyes grew still as the priest laid the
+sacred wafer on his lips. The broken soldier was made whole.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HEARING EAR
+
+
+There were three American boys from the region of Philadelphia
+in the dugout, "Somewhere in France"; and they found it a snug
+habitation, considering the circumstances.
+
+The central heating system--a round sheet-iron stove, little larger
+than a "topper" hat--sent out incredible quantities of acrid smoke
+at such times as the rusty stovepipe refused to draw. But on cold
+nights and frosty mornings the refractory thing was a distinct
+consolation. The ceiling of the  apartment lacked finish. When
+wet it dropped mud; when dry, dust. But it had the merit of being
+twenty feet thick--enough to stop any German shell except a "Jack
+Johnson" full of high explosive. The beds were elegantly excavated
+in the wall, and by a slight forward inclination of the body
+you could use them as _fauteuils_. The rats approved of them
+highly.
+
+There were two flights of ladder-stairs leading down from the trench
+into the dugout, and the holes at the top which served as vestibules
+were three or four yards apart. It was a comfort to think of this
+architectural design; for if the explosion of a big shell blocked
+up one of the entrances, the other would probably remain open, and
+you would not be caught in a trap with the other rats.
+
+The main ornament of the _salon_ was a neat but not gaudy
+biscuit-box. The top of it was a centre-table, illuminated by a
+single, guttering candle; the interior was a "combination" wardrobe
+and sideboard. Around this simple but satisfying piece of furniture
+the three transient tenants of the  dugout had just played a game
+of dummy bridge, and now sat smoking and bickering as peacefully
+as if they were in a college club-room in America. The night on
+the front was what the French call  _"relativement calme."_
+Sporadic explosions  above punctuated but did not interrupt the
+debate,  which eddied about the high theme of Education--with a
+capital "E"--and the particular point of dispute was the study of
+languages.
+
+"Everything is going to change after the war," said Phipps-Herrick,
+a big Harvard man from Bryn Mawr and a member of the Unsocial
+Socialists' Club. "We are going to make a new world. Must have a
+new education. Sweep away all the old stuff--languages, grammar,
+literature, philosophy, history, and all that. Put in something modern
+and practical. Montessori system for the little kids. Vocational
+training for the bigger ones. Teach them to make a living. Then
+organize them politically  and economically. You can do what you
+like, then, with England, France, and America  together. Germany
+will be shut out. Why study German? From a practical point of view,
+I ask you, why?"
+
+"Didn't you take it at Harvard?" sarcastically drawled Rosenlaube,
+a Princeton man from Rittenhouse  Square. (His grandfather was born
+at Frankfort-on-the-Main, but his mother was a Biddle, and he had
+penetrated about an inch into the American  diplomatic service when
+the war summoned him to a more serious duty.) "I understood that
+all you Harvard men were strong on modern languages,  especially
+German."
+
+Phipps-Herrick grunted.
+
+"Certainly I took it. It was supposed to be a soft-snap course.
+What do you think we go to Harvard  for? But that little beast,
+Professor von Buch, gave me a cold forty-minus on examination. So
+I dropped it, and thank God I've forgotten the little I ever knew
+of German! It will be absolutely useless in the new world."
+
+"Right you are," said Rosenlaube. "My grandfather  used to speak
+it when he was angry--a sloppy, slushy language, extremely ugly.
+At Princeton, you know, we stand by the classics, Latin and Greek,
+the real thing in languages. You ought to hear Dean Andy West talk
+about that. Of course a fellow forgets his Virgil and his Homer when
+he gets out in the world. But, then, he's had the benefit of them;
+they've given him real culture and  literature. There's nothing
+outside of the classics,  except perhaps a few things in French
+and Italian.  Thank God I never studied German!"
+
+The third man, who had kept silence up to this point, now gently
+butted in. It was little Phil Mitchell, of Overbrook, a University
+of  Pennsylvania man, who had been stopped in his  junior year by
+a financial catastrophe in the  family, and had gone out to Idaho
+to earn his living as third assistant bookkeeper in a big mining
+concern. He took a few real books with him, besides those that
+he was to "keep." Double entry was his business; reading,  his
+recreation; thinking, his vocation. From all this the great war
+called him as with a trumpet.
+
+"Look here, you fellows," he said quietly, "in spite of this war
+and all the rest of it, there  are some good things in German."
+
+"What," they cried, "you, a fire-eater, stand up for the Kaiser
+and his language? Damn him!"
+
+"With all my heart," assented Mitchell. "But the language isn't his.
+It existed a long while before he was born. It isn't very pretty,
+I'll admit. But there are lots of fine things in it. Kant and Lessing,
+Goethe and Schiller and Heine--they all loved liberty and made it
+shine out in their work. Do you mean to say that I must give them
+up and throw my German overboard because these modern Potsdammers
+have acted like brutes?"
+
+"Yes," cried Phipps-Herrick and Rosenlaube, nodding at each other,
+"that's what we mean, and that's what America means. The German
+language must go!"
+
+"Look here," said Phipps-Herrick, "you admit that modern education
+must be useful? Well, there won't be any more use for German, because
+we are going to shut Germany out of the international trades-union.
+She has betrayed the principles of the new era. We are going to
+boycott her."
+
+"Won't that be rather difficult?" queried Mitchell,  shaking his
+head. "Seventy or eighty million people--hard to shut them out of
+the world, eh?"
+
+"Nonsense, dear Phil," drawled Rosenlaube; "it will be easy enough.
+But I don't agree with Phipps-Herrick about the reason or method.
+We are going to have a new era after the war. But it will not
+be a utilitarian age. It will be a return to beauty and form and
+culture--not with a 'k.' First of all, we are going to kill a great
+many  Germans. Then we are going to Berlin to knock down all the
+ugly statues in the _Sieges-Allee_ and smash the parvenu German
+Empire. Then we shall have a new age on classic lines. People will
+still use French and English and Italian because there is some beauty
+in those languages. But nobody outside of Germany  will speak or
+read German. It is a barbarous tongue--shapeless and hideous--used
+by barbarians who gobble and snort when they talk. Sorry for Kant
+and Goethe and Heine and all that crowd, but their time is up;
+they've got to go out with their beastly language!"
+
+"Yes," said Phipps-Herrick, "out with them, bag and baggage. Think
+what the German spies and propagandists have done in America.
+Schools full of pacifist and pro-German teachers; text-books full
+of praise of the German Empire and the  Hohenzollern Highbinders;
+newspapers full of treason, printed in the German language. Why,
+it's only a piece of self-defense to clean it all out, root and
+branch. No more German taught or spoken, printed or read, in the
+United States. Forget it! Twenty-three for the Hun language!"
+
+"Noble," gently murmured Mitchell, shaking his head again; "very
+noble! But not very easy and perhaps not entirely wise. Why should I
+throw away something that has been useful to me, and may be again?
+Why forget the little German that I know and burn my Goethe and
+refuse to listen to Beethoven's music? I won't do it, that's all."
+
+"Our little friend is a concealed Kaiserite," said Rosenlaube. "He
+wants to Germanize America."
+
+"No, Rosy," said Mitchell, thoughtfully running his  hand over some
+nicks on the butt of his rifle in the corner; "you know I'm not a
+Kaiserite of any kind. I've got seven scored against him already,
+and I'm going to get some more. But the language question seems to
+me different. Cut out the German newspapers and the German schools
+in America by all means! No more teaching of the primary branches
+in any language but English!  Make it absolutely necessary for
+everybody in the U. S. A. to learn the language of the country the
+first thing. Then in the high schools and universities  let German
+be studied like any other foreign language, by those who want
+it--chemists, and philosophers, and historians, and electrical
+engineers, and so on. We could censor the text-books and keep out
+all complimentary allusions to the  Hohenzollern family."
+
+"Oh, shut up, Phil," growled Phipps-Herrick.  "You're too soft,
+you old easy-mark! You don't go half far enough. We may not decide
+to exterminate  the Hun race in Europe. But we have decided to
+exterminate their language in America."
+
+His hand was groping inside the biscuit-box.  He pulled out a little
+ditty-bag and carefully  extracted a bit of newspaper.
+
+"Listen to this, you fellows. This is from the National Obscurity
+Society. You know a chap with a German name is president of it,
+but he's a real patriot, hundred per cent, not fifty-fifty, Philly.
+'The following States have abolished the teaching of German:
+Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
+Maryland, Virginia,  Georgia, Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois,
+Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Arkansas, Arizona,  Colorado,
+Montana, California, and Oregon.' _Abolished_, mind you! What
+do you think of that?"
+
+"Most excellent Phippick," nodded Rosenlaube, "I opine, as Horace
+said to Cicero, 'That's the stuff,' or words to that effect. What
+saith the senator from Mitchellville?"
+
+"Noble," grinned Phil, "unmistakably noble!  Those Obscurity fellows
+are a fiery lot. It reminds me that during the late war with Spain,
+when I was a little, tiny boy, but brimful of ferocity, I  refused
+to eat my favorite dessert because it was called _Spanish_
+cream. I felt sure at the time that my heroic conduct was of distinct
+assistance to Dewey in the battle of Manila Bay."
+
+"Well, then," said Phipps-Herrick, grabbing him by the shoulders
+and shaking him  good-humoredly, "you murderous little pacifist
+with seven nicks on your gun, will you give up your  German? Will
+you forget it?"
+
+Mitchell chuckled and shook his head,
+
+"As far as requisite under military orders. But no further, not by
+a--"
+
+A pair of muddy boots was heard and seen descending  one of
+the ladders, followed by the manly and still rather neat form of
+Lieutenant Barker Bunn, a Cornell man from West Philadelphia. The
+three men sprang to their feet and saluted smartly, for the lieutenant
+was very stiff about all the  preliminary forms.
+
+"Too loud talking here," he said gruffly. "I heard you before I
+came down. Who is here? Oh, I see, Sergeant Phipps-Herrick, Privates
+Rosenlaube  and Mitchell. It's your turn to go out on listening
+post to-night, sergeant. Twelve sharp, stay three hours, go as far
+as you can, come back and report, take Mitchell or Rosenlaube with
+you.  Captain's orders."
+
+The sergeant saluted again, and the two men looked at each other.
+
+"Why not both of us, sir?" said Mitchell.
+
+The lieutenant regarded him with some surprise.  Listening post is
+not a detail passionately desired by the men. It is always dirty,
+frequently  dangerous, generally obscure, and often fatal. Hence
+there is no keen competition for it.
+
+"Two is the usual number for a listening post," said Barker Bunn
+thoughtfully. "But there is no regulation about it, and the captain
+did not specify any number. Well, yes, I suppose you can all three
+go, if you are set on it. In fact, I give the order to that effect."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Rosenlaube and Mitchell.  Phipps-Herrick,
+feeling that the strict etiquette of the preliminaries had been
+fully observed and the time to be human had come, held out a box
+of "Fierce Fairies."
+
+"Have a cigarette, Bunn, and take a chair, do.  Time for a little
+talk this quiet night? Tell us what's doing up above."
+
+"Nothing particular," said Barker Bunn, lighting  and relaxing. "But
+the old man has a hunch that the Fritzies are grubbing a mine--a
+corker--to get our goat. Hence this business of ears  forward.
+The old man thinks the Fritzies have a strong grouch against this
+little alley, and since they couldn't take it top side last week
+they're going to try to bust it out bottom side with a big bang some
+day soon. Maybe so--maybe just greens--but, anyway, you've got to
+go on the Q. T. with this job--no noise, don't even whisper unless
+you have to; just listen for all you're worth. P'r'aps you'll hear
+that little tap-tap-tapping that tells where Fritzie Mole is at
+work. Then if you come back and tell the old man where it is, he'll
+give you all the cigarettes you want. But say, do you want me to
+give you a pointer on the way to go, the method of procedure, as
+the old man would call it?"
+
+They agreed that they were thirsting for information  and instruction.
+
+"Well, it's this way," continued Barker Bunn.  "You know I had a
+bit of experience in listening post while I was with the Canadians
+down around 'Wipers'; and I noticed that most of the troubles
+came from a bad method of procedure. Fellows went out any old way;
+followed each other in the dark, and then hunted for each other
+and came to grief; all those kind of silly fumbles. Now, what you
+need is _formation_--see? Must have some sort of formation
+for advance. Must keep in touch. For two men a tandem is right. For
+three men, what you want is a spike-team--middle man crawls ahead,
+other men follow on each side just near enough to touch his left
+heel with right hand and right heel with left hand--a triangle,
+see?  Keep touching once every thirty seconds. If you miss it,
+leader crawls back, side men crawl in, sure to meet, nobody gets
+lost. Go as far _as_ you can, then spread out like a fan, fold
+together _when_ you can, come back _if_ you can--that's
+the way to cover the most possible ground on a listening post. Do
+you get me?"
+
+"We get you," they nodded. "It's a wonderful scheme." And Rosenlaube
+added in his most  impressive literary manner: "Plato, it _must_
+be so, thou reasonest well."
+
+"But tell me," said the lieutenant, "what were you  fellows chattering
+about so loud when I came down?"
+
+So they told him, and, according to the habit of college boys,
+they skirmished over the ground of debate again, and Barker Bunn
+vigorously supported  the majority opinion, and Mitchell was left
+in a hopeless minority of one, clinging obstinately to his faith
+that there had been, and still might be, some use for the German
+language.
+
+Midnight came, and with it the return of the lieutenant's official
+manner. He saw the trio slide over the top, one by one, vanishing
+in the starless dark. "Good luck going and coming," he whispered;
+and it sounded almost like an unofficial prayer.
+
+In single file they crept through the prepared opening in the
+barbed-wire entanglement, and so out into No Man's Land, where they
+took up their spike-team formation. Phipps-Herrick was the leader,
+the other men were the wheelers. They had agreed on a code of
+silent signals: One kick with the heel or one pinch with the hand
+meant "stop"; two meant "back"; three meant "get together." They
+carried no rifles, because the rifle is an awkward tool for a
+noiseless crawler to lug.  But each man had a big trench-knife and
+a pair of automatic pistols, with plenty of ammunition.
+
+The space between the two front lines of barbed wire in this region
+was not more than four or five hundred yards. In the murk of that
+unstarred, drizzling night, where every inch must be felt out, it
+seemed like a vast, horrible territory. There was nothing monotonous
+about it but the blackness of darkness. To the touch it was a
+_paysage accidente_, a landscape full of surprises. Dead bodies
+were sprinkled over it. It was pockmarked with small shell-holes
+and pitted with large craters, many of them full of water, all slimy
+with mud. Phipps-Herrick nearly slipped into one of the deepest, but
+a lively kick warned his followers of the danger, and they pulled
+him back by the heels.
+
+Now and then a star-shell looped across the spongy sky, casting a
+lurid illumination over the ghastly field. When the three travellers
+caught the soft swish of its ascent, they "froze"--motionless as
+a shamming 'possum--mimicking death among the dead.
+
+It was a long, slow, silent, revolting crawl.  Sounds which did
+not concern them were plenty--distant cannonade, shells exploding
+here and there, scattered rifle-shots. All these they unconsciously
+eliminated, listening for something else, ears pressed to the ground
+wherever they could find a comparatively  dry spot. From their
+point of hearing the night was still as the grave--no subterranean
+tapping  and scraping could they hear anywhere under the sea of
+mud.
+
+Once Rosenlaube caught a faint metallic sound, and signalled
+through Phipps-Herrick's left leg to Mitchell's left arm, "Stop!"
+All three listened tensely. They crawled toward the faint noise.
+It was made by a loose end of wire swaying in the night-wind and
+tapping on a broken helmet.
+
+They were getting close to the German barbed wire. The leader had
+swung around to the west, following what he judged to be the line
+of the front trench, perhaps forty yards away. He was determined
+to hear something before he went back.  And he did!
+
+Just as he had made up his mind to call up the other fellows for the
+final spreadout in fan  formation, his groping right hand touched
+something round and smooth and hard. It seemed to be made fast to
+a string or wire, but he pulled it toward him and gave the "stop"
+signal to his followers.
+
+The thing he had picked up was a telephone receiver.  How it came
+to be there he did not know.  Perhaps a German listening post had
+carried it out last night, in order to receive directions from the
+trench; perhaps the mining party--man killed, receiver  dropped,
+wire connection not cut, or tangled up with other wires--who can
+tell? One thing is sure--here is the receiver, faintly buzzing.
+Phipps-Herrick joyfully puts it to his ear. He hears a voice and
+words, but it is all gibberish to him. With a look of desperation
+on his face he gives the "get together" signal.
+
+Rosenlaube crawls up first and takes hold of the cylinder, puts it
+to his ear. He hears the sound, but it says absolutely nothing to
+him. It is like being at the door of the secret of the universe
+and unable to get over the threshold.
+
+Then comes Mitchell, slowly, a little lame, and almost "all in."
+Phipps-Herrick thrusts the receiver  into his hand. As he listens
+a beatific expression  spreads over his face. It lasts a long time,
+and then he lays down the cylinder with a sigh.
+
+The three heads are close together, and Mitchell whispers under
+his breath:
+
+"Got 'em--got the whole thing--line of mine changed--raiders coming
+out now--twelve men--rough on us, but if we can get back to our
+alley we've got 'em! Crawl home quick."
+
+[Illustration with caption: "I'm going to carry you in, spite of
+hell"]
+
+They crawled together in a bunch, formation ignored. Presently
+steps sounded near them. A swift light swept the hole where they
+crouched, a volley of rifle-shots crashed into it. The Americans
+answered with their pistols, and saw three or four of the dark
+forms on the edge of the hole topple over. The rest disappeared.
+But Rosenlaube had a rifle-ball through his right hip and another
+through his shoulder. Mitchell and Phipps-Herrick started to carry
+him.
+
+"Drop it," he whispered. "I'm safe here till dawn--you get home,
+quick! Specially Phil. He's the one that counts. Cut away, boys!"
+
+Meantime the American trench had opened fire and the German trench
+answered. The still night broke into a tempest of noise. A bullet
+or a bit of shell caught Mitchell in the knee and crumpled him up.
+Phipps-Herrick lifted him on his back and stood up.
+
+"Come on," he said, "you little cuss. You're the only one that has
+the stuff we went out after.  I'm going to carry you in, 'spite of
+hell."
+
+And he did it.
+
+Mitchell told the full story of the change in the direction of the
+German mine and the plan of the next assault, as he had heard it
+through that lost receiver. The captain said it was information
+of the highest value. It counted up to a couple of hundred German
+prisoners and three machine-guns  in the next two days.
+
+Rosenlaube, still alive, was brought in just before  daybreak by a
+volunteer rescue-party under the guidance of Phipps-Herrick. All
+three were cited in the despatches. Phipps-Herrick in due time
+received the Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry on the field.
+But Mitchell had the surplus  satisfaction of the hearing ear.
+
+"Look here, old man," Rosenlaube said to him as they lay side by
+side in the hospital, "'member our talk in the dugout just before
+our big night?  Well, I allow there was something in what you
+said.  There are times when it is a good thing to know a bit of
+that barbarous German language. And you never can tell when one of
+those times may hit you."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES OF QUEBEC
+
+
+If you love a certain country, for its natural beauty, or for the
+friends you have made there, or for the happy days you have passed
+within its borders, you are troubled and distressed when that
+country comes under criticism, suspicion, and reproach.
+
+It is just as it would be if a woman who had been very kind
+to you and had done you a great deal of good were accused of some
+unworthiness. You would refuse to believe it. You would insist on
+understanding before you pronounced judgment.  Memories would ask
+to be heard.
+
+That is what I feel in regard to French Canada, the province of
+Quebec, where I have had so many joyful times, and found so many
+true comrades among the _voyageurs_, the _habitants_, and
+the _coureurs de bois._
+
+People are saying now that Quebec is not loyal, not brave, not
+patriotic in this war for freedom and humanity.
+
+Even if the accusation were true, of course it would not spoil the
+big woods, the rushing rivers, the sparkling lakes, the friendly
+mountains of French Canada. But all the same, it hurts me to hear
+such a charge against my friends of the forest.
+
+Do you mean to tell me that Francois and Ferdinand  and Louis and
+Jean and Eugene and Iside are not true men? Do you mean to tell me
+that these lumbermen who steer big logs down steep places, these
+trappers who brave the death-cold grip of Winter, these canoe-men
+who shout for joy as they run the foaming rapids,--do you mean to
+tell me that they have no courage?
+
+I am not ready to credit that. I want to hear what they have to say
+for themselves. And in listening for that testimony certain little
+remembrances come to me--not an argument--only a few sketches on
+the wall. Here they are. Take them for what they are worth.
+
+I
+
+LA GRANDE DECHARGE
+
+September, 1894
+
+In one of the long stillwaters of the mighty stream that rushes
+from _Lac Saint Jean_ to make the  Saguenay--below the _Ile
+Maligne_ and above the cataract of Chicoutimi--two birch-bark
+canoes are floating quietly, descending with rhythmic strokes of
+the paddle, through the luminous northern twilight.
+
+The chief guide, Jean Morel, is a _coureur de bois_ of the old
+type--broad-shouldered, red-bearded, a fearless canoeman, a good
+hunter and fisherman--simple of speech and deep of heart: a good
+man to trust in the rapids.
+
+"Tell me, Jean," I ask in the comfortable leisure of our voyage
+which conduces to pipe-smoking and conversation, "tell me, are you
+a Frenchman or an Englishman?"
+
+"Not the one, nor the other," answers Jean in his  old-fashioned
+_patois._ "M'sieu' knows I am French-Canadian."
+
+A remarkable answer, when you come to think of it; for it claims
+a nationality which has never existed, and is not likely to exist,
+except in a dream.
+
+"Well, then," I say, following my impulse of psychological curiosity,
+of which Jean is sublimely ignorant, "suppose a war should come
+between France and England. On which side would you fight?"
+
+Jean knocks the dottle out of his pipe, refills and relights. Then,
+between the even strokes of his paddle, he makes this extraordinary
+reply:
+
+_"M'sieu, I suppose my body would march under the flag of England.
+But my heart would march under the flag of France."_
+
+Good old Jean Morel! You had no premonition of this glorious war
+in which the Tricolor and the Union Jack would advance together
+against the ravening black eagle of Germany, and the Stars and
+Stripes would join them.
+
+How should you know anything about it? Your log cabin was your
+capitol. Your little family was your council of state. Even the
+rest of us, proud of our university culture, were too blind, in
+those late Victorian days, to see the looming menace of Prussian
+paganism and the conquer-lust of the Hohenzollerns, which has
+plunged the whole world in war.
+
+II
+
+OXFORD
+
+February, 1917
+
+The "Schools" building, though modern, is one of the stateliest
+on the Main Street. Here, in old peaceful times, the university
+examinations used to be held. Now it is transformed into a hospital
+for the wounded men from the fighting front  of freedom.
+
+Sir William Osier, Canadian, and world-renowned physician, is my
+guide, an old friend in Baltimore, now Regius Professor of Medicine
+in Oxford.
+
+"Come," he says, "I want you to see an example of the Carrel
+treatment of wounds."
+
+The patient is sitting up in bed--a fine young fellow about twenty
+years old. A shrapnel-shell, somewhere in France, passed over his
+head and burst just behind him. His bare back is a mass of scars.
+The healing fluid is being pumped in through the shattered elbow
+of his right arm, not yet out of danger.
+
+"Does it hurt," I ask.
+
+"Not much," he answers, trying to smile, "at least not too much,
+M'sieu'."
+
+The accent of French Canada is unmistakable.  I talk to him in his
+own dialect.
+
+"What part of Quebec do you come from?"
+
+"From _Trois Rivieres,_ M'sieu', or rather from a country back
+of that, the Saint Maurice River."
+
+"I know it well--often hunted there. But what made you go to the
+war?"
+
+"I heard that England fought to save France from the damned Germans.
+That was enough, M'sieu', to make me march. Besides, I always liked
+to fight."
+
+"What did you do before you became a soldier?"
+
+"I was a lumberjack."
+
+(What he really said was, _"J'allais en chantier,"_ "I went
+in the shanty." If he had spoken in classic French he would have
+said, _"J'etais bucheron."_ How it brought back the smell of
+the big spruce forest to hear that word _chantier_, in Oxford!)
+
+[Illustration: "I was a lumberjack."]
+
+"Well, then, I suppose you will return to the wood-cutting again,
+when this war is over."
+
+"But no, M'sieu', how can I, with this good-for-nothing arm? I
+shall never be capable of swinging the axe again."
+
+"But you could be the cook, perfectly. And you  know the cook gets
+the best pay in the whole shanty."
+
+His face lights up a little.
+
+"Truly," he replies; "I never thought of that, but it is true. I
+have seen a bit of cooking at the front and learned some things.
+I might take up that end of the job. _But anyway, Im glad I went
+to the war."_
+
+So we say good-by--_"bonne chance!"_
+
+Since that day the good physician who guided me through the hospital
+has borne without a murmur  the greatest of all sacrifices--the loss
+of his only son, a brave and lovely boy, killed in action against
+the thievish, brutal German hordes.
+
+III
+
+SAINTE MARGUERITE August, 1917
+
+The wild little river _Sainte Marguerite_ runs joyously among
+the mountains and the green woods, back of the Saguenay, singing
+the same old song of liberty and obedience to law, as if the world
+had never been vexed and tortured by the madness of war-lords.
+
+A tired man who has a brief furlough from active service is lucky
+if he can spend it among the big trees and beside a flowing stream.
+The trees are ministers of peace. The stream is full of courage
+and adventure as it rushes toward the big sea.
+
+We are coming back to camp from the morning's  fishing, with a
+brace of good salmon in the canoe.
+
+"Tell me, Iside," I ask of the wiry little bowman, the best hunter
+and fisher on the river, "why is it that you are not at the war?"
+
+"But, M'sieu', I am too old. A father of family--almost a
+grandfather--the war is not for men of that age. Besides, it does
+not concern us here in Quebec."
+
+"Why not? It concerns the whole world. Who told you that it does
+not concern you?"
+
+"The priest at our village of _Sacre Coeur,_ M'sieu'.  He says
+that it is only right and needful for a good Christian to fight
+in defense of his home and his church. Let those Germans attack us
+here, _chez nous_, and you shall see how the men of _Sacre
+Coeur_ will stand up and fight."
+
+It was an amazing revelation of a state of mind, absolutely simple,
+perfectly sincere, and strictly imprisoned by the limitations of
+its only  recognized teacher.
+
+"But suppose, Iside, that England and France should be beaten down
+by Germany, over there.  What would happen to French Canada? Do
+you think you could stand alone then, to defend your home and your
+church? Are you big enough, you French-Canadians?"
+
+"M'sieu', I have never thought of that. Perhaps  we have more than
+a million people--many of them children, for you understand we
+French-Canadians have large families--but of course the children
+could not fight. Still, we should not like to have them subject to
+a German Emperor. We would fight against that, if the war came to
+us here on our own soil."
+
+"But don't you see that the only way to keep it from coming
+to you on your own soil is to fight against it over there? Hasn't
+the English Government  given you all your liberties, for home and
+church?"
+
+"Yes, M'sieu', especially since Sir Wilfred Laurier.  Ah, that is
+a great man! A true French-Canadian!"
+
+"Well, then, you know that he is against Germany.  You know he
+believes the freedom of Canada depends on the defeat of Germany,
+over there, on the other side of the sea. You would not like a
+German Canada, would you?"
+
+"Not at all, M'sieu', that would be intolerable.  But I have never
+thought of that."
+
+"Well, think of it now, will you? And tell your priest to think of
+it, too. He is a Christian. The things we are fighting for belong
+to Christianity--justice, liberty, humanity. Tell him that, and tell
+him also some of the things which the Germans did to the Christian
+people in Belgium and Northern France. I will narrate them to you
+later."
+
+"M'sieu'," says Iside, dipping his paddle deeper as we round the
+sharp corner of a rock, "I shall remember all that you tell me, and
+I shall tell it again to our priest. You know we have few newspapers
+here. Most of us could not read them, anyway. I am  not well convinced
+that we yet comprehend, here in  French Canada, the meaning of
+this war. But we shall endeavor to comprehend it better. And when
+we comprehend, we shall be ready to do our duty--you can trust
+yourself to the men of _Sacre Coeur_ for that. We love peace--we
+all about here _(nous autres d'icite)--but we can fight like the
+devil when we know it is for a good cause--liberty, for example._
+Meanwhile would M'sieu' like to stop at the pool _'La Pinette'_
+on the way down and try a couple of casts? There was a big salmon
+rising there yesterday."
+
+That very evening a runner comes up the river, through the woods,
+to tell Iside and Eugene, who are Selectmen of the community of
+_Sacre Coeur,_ that they must come down to the village for an
+important meeting at ten o'clock the next morning.
+
+So they set off, quite as a matter of course, for their thirty-five
+mile tramp through the forest in the dark. They are good citizens,
+as well as good woodsmen, you understand. On the second day they
+are back again at their work in the canoe.
+
+"Well, Iside," I ask, "how was it with the meeting  yesterday? All
+correct?"
+
+"All correct, M'sieu'. It was an affair of a new schoolhouse. We are
+going to build it. All goes well. We are beginning to comprehend.
+Quebec is a large corner of the world. But it is only a corner,
+after all, we can see that. And those damned Germans  who do such
+terrible things in France, we do not love them at all, no matter what
+the priest may say about Christian charity. They are Protestants,
+M'sieu', is it not?"
+
+"Well," I answer, hiding a smile with a large puff of smoke, "some
+of them call themselves Protestants  and some call themselves
+Catholics. But it seems to me they are all infidels, heathen--judging
+by what they do. That is the real proof."
+
+_"C'est b'en vrai, M'sieu',_" says Iside. "It is the conduct
+that shows the Christian."
+
+IV
+
+BELOW CAPE DIAMOND March, 1818
+
+The famous citadel of Quebec stands on top of the steep hill that
+dominates the junction of the Saint Charles River with the Saint
+Lawrence. That is Cape Diamond--a natural stronghold. Indians and
+French, and British, and Americans have fought for that coign of
+vantage. For a century and a half the Union Jack has floated there,
+and under its fair protection the Province of Quebec, keeping its
+quaint old language and peasant customs, has become an important
+part of the British Empire.
+
+The Upper Town, on the high shoulders of Cape Diamond, with
+its government buildings, convents, hospitals, showy new shops,
+and ancient gardens, its archiepiscopal palace, trim theological
+seminary,  huge castle-like hotel, and placid ramparts dominating
+the _Ile d'Orleans_ with rows of antiquated, harmless cannon
+around which the children  play--the Upper Town belongs distinctly
+to the citadel. The garrison is in evidence here. A regimental band
+plays in the kiosk on Dufferin Terrace on summer evenings. There
+is a good mixture  of khaki in the coloring of the street crowd,
+and many wounded soldiers are seen, invalided home from the front.
+They are all very proud of the glorious record that Canada has made
+in the battle for freedom. Most of them, it seems to me, are from
+English-speaking families. But by no means all. There are many of
+unmistakable French-Canadian  stock; and they tell me proudly of
+the notable bravery of a certain regiment which was formed early
+from volunteers of their own people--hunters, woodsmen, farmers,
+guides. The war does not seem  very far away, up here in the region
+of the citadel.
+
+The Lower Town, with its narrow streets, little shops, gray stone
+warehouses, dingy tenements, and old-fashioned markets, is quite a
+different place.  It belongs to the slow rivers on whose banks it
+drowses and dreams. The once prosperous lumberyards  are half empty
+now. The shipping along the wharfs has been dwindling for many
+years. The northern winter puts a quietus on the waterside.  Troops,
+munitions, supplies, must go down by rail to an ice-free port. The
+white river-boats are all laid up. But a way is kept open across
+the river to Levis, and the sturdy, snub-nosed little ice-breaking
+ferry-boats buffet back and forth almost without  interruption. There
+is a plenty of nothing to do, now, in the Lower Town; pipe-smoking
+and heated discussion of parish politics are incessant; an inconsiderate
+quantity of bad liquor is imbibed, _pour faire passer le temps._
+
+Suddenly--if anything can be said to happen suddenly in Quebec--bad
+news comes from the Lower Town. A riot has broken out, an insurrection
+of the French-Canadians against the new military  service act, an
+armed resistance to the draft.  Windows have been smashed, shops
+looted. A mob, not very large perhaps, but extremely noisy, has
+marched up the steep curve of Mountain Hill Street, into the Upper
+Town. Shots have been exchanged. People have been killed. The
+revolution  in Quebec has begun.
+
+That is the disquieting rumor which comes to us, carefully spread and
+magnified by those agencies which have an interest in preventing, or
+at least obstructing the righteous punishment of the German criminals
+in this war. Can it possibly be true?  Have the French-Canadians gone
+crazy, as the Irish did in 1916, under the lunatic incantations of
+the Sinn-Feiners? Are they also people without a country,  playing
+blindly into the hands of the Prussian gang who have set out to
+subjugate the world?
+
+No! This riot in the old city is not an expression of the spirit of
+French Canada at all. It is only a shrewdly stupid trick in local
+politics, planned and staged by small-minded and loud-voiced
+politicians  who are trying to keep their hold upon the province.
+The so-called revolutionists are either imported loafers and
+trouble-makers, or else they are drawn from that class of "hooligans"
+who have always made a noise around the Quebec hotels at night. They
+shout much: they swear abominably: but they have no real fight in
+them. They can be hired and used--up to a certain point--but beyond
+that they are worthless. It is a waste of money to employ them.
+The trouble below Cape Diamond froths up and goes down as quickly
+as the effervescence  on a bottle of ginger beer. Before you can
+find out what it is all about, it is all over. It has not even
+touched the real French-Canadians, the men of the forests and the
+farms. They are loyal by nature, and slow by temperament. You have
+got to give them time, and light.
+
+What is happening in Quebec now? Just what ought to happen. The
+draft is going forward smoothly and steadily, without resistance.
+Sons of the best French-Canadian families are volunteering  for the
+war. Recruits from Laval University are coming in, stirred perhaps
+by the knowledge that forty thousand Catholic priests in France
+have entered the army which fights against the  Prussian paganism.
+
+The petty politicians who have sought to serve their own ends
+by putting forward the mad notion of secession and an independent
+"Republic of Quebec"  have gone to cover under a storm of ridicule
+and indignation. M. Bourassa's iridescent dream of French-Canadian
+nationalism has disappeared like a soap-bubble. M. Francoeur's
+motion in the Quebec legislature, carrying a vague hint that the
+province might withdraw from the Dominion if the other provinces
+were not particularly nice to it, was snowed under by an overwhelming
+vote.  The patriotic and eloquent speech of the provincial Premier,
+M. Gouin, was received with every sign of approval. The political
+cinema has shown its latest film, and the title is evidently
+_"Fidelite de Quebec."_
+
+Meantime a Catholic missioner has been in the province. The visit
+of Archbishop Mathieu of Saskatchewan was probably made on the
+invitation, certainly with the consent, of the hierarchy of Quebec.
+That intelligent and fearless preacher brought with him a clear and
+ringing gospel, a call to all Christian folk to stand up together
+and "resist  even unto blood, striving against sin"--the sin of
+the German war-lords who have plunged the world in agony to enforce
+their heresy that Might makes Right.
+
+Such a message, at this time, must be of inestimable  value to
+the humble and devout people of the province, attached as they are
+to their church, and looking patiently to her for guidance. The
+parish priests, devoted to their lonely tasks in obscure hamlets,
+may get a new and broader inspiration from it. They may have a vision
+of the ashes of Louvain University, the ruin of Rheims Cathedral,
+wrought by ruthless German hands. Then the church in Quebec will
+measure up to the church in Belgium and in France. Then the village
+cure will say to his young men: "Go! Fight! It is for the glory
+of God and the good of the world. It is for the Christian religion
+and the life of  free Canada."
+
+
+"Well, then," says the gentle reader, of a sociological  turn of
+mind, who has followed me thus far, "what have you got to say about
+the big political problem of Quebec? Is a French-speaking province
+a safe factor in the Dominion of Canada,  in the British Empire? Why
+was Quebec so late in  coming into this world war against Germany?"
+
+Dear man, I have nothing whatever to say about what you call the
+big political problem of Quebec.  I told you that at the beginning.
+That is a question  for Canada and Great Britain to settle. The
+British colonial policy has always been one of the greatest liberality
+and fairness, except perhaps in that last quarter of the eighteenth
+century, when the madness of a German king and his ministers in
+England forced the United States to break away from her, and form
+the republic which has now become her most powerful friend.
+
+The perpetuation of a double language within a state, an _enclave_,
+undoubtedly carries with it an element of inconvenience and possibly
+of danger.  Yet Belgium is bilingual and Switzerland is  quadrilingual.
+If any tongue other than that of the central government is
+to be admitted, what could be better than French--the language of
+culture, which has spoken the large words, _liberte, egalite,
+fraternite?_ The native dialect of French Canada is a quaint
+and delightful thing--an eighteenth-century  vocabulary with pepper
+and salt from the speech of the woodsmen and hunters. I should be
+sorry if it had to fade out. But evidently that is a question for
+Canada to decide. She has been a bilingual country for a long time.
+I see no reason why the  experiment should not be carried on.
+
+Quebec has been rather slow in waking up to the meaning of this war
+for world-freedom. But she has been very little slower than some
+of the United States, after all.
+
+The Church? Well, the influence of the Church always has depended
+and always must depend upon the quality of her ministers. In
+France, in Belgium, they have not fallen short of their high duty.
+The Archbishop of Saskatchewan, who came to Quebec, preached a
+clear gospel of self-sacrifice for a  righteous cause.
+
+But the plain people of Quebec--the _voyageurs_, the
+_habitants_, my old friends in the back districts--that is
+what I am thinking about. I am sure they are all right. They are
+very simple, old-fashioned, childish, if you like; but there is
+no pacifist or  pro-German virus among them. If their parochial
+politicians  will let them alone, if their priests will speak to
+them as prophets of the God of Righteousness,  they will show their
+mettle. They will prove their right to be counted among the free
+peoples of the world who are willing to defend peace with arms.
+
+That is what I expect to find if I ever get back to my canoemen on
+the _Sainte Marguerite_ again.
+
+SYLVANORA, July 10, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A CLASSIC INSTANCE
+
+
+"Latin and Greek are dead," said Hardman, lean, eager, absolute,
+a fanatic of modernity. "They have been a long while dying, and
+this war has finished  them. We see now that they are useless in
+the modern world. Nobody is going to waste time in studying them.
+Education must be direct and scientific. Train men for efficiency
+and prepare them for defense. Otherwise they will have no chance
+of making a living or of keeping what they make. Your classics are
+musty and rusty and fusty.  _Heraus mit----"_
+
+He checked himself suddenly, with as near a blush as his sallow
+skin could show.
+
+"Excuse me," he stammered; "bad habit, contracted  when I was a
+student at Kiel--only place where they really understood metallurgy."
+
+Professor John De Vries, round, rosy, white-haired, steeped in the
+mellow lore of ancient history,  puffed his cigar and smiled that
+benignant smile with which he was accustomed joyfully to enter a
+duel of wits. Many such conflicts had enlivened  that low-ceilinged
+book-room of his at Calvinton.
+
+"You are excused, my dear Hardman," he said, "especially because
+you have just given us a valuable illustration of the truth that
+language and the study of language have a profound influence upon
+thought.  The tongue which you inadvertently used belongs to the
+country that bred the theory of education which you advocate. The
+theory is as crude and imperfect as the German language itself.
+And that is saying a great deal."
+
+Young Richard De Vries, the professor's favorite nephew and adopted
+son, whose chief interest was athletics, but who had a very pretty
+side taste for verbal bouts, was sitting with the older men before
+a cheerful fire of logs in the chilly spring of 1917.  He tucked
+one leg comfortably underneath him and leaned forward in his chair,
+lighting a fresh cigarette. He foresaw a brisk encounter, and was
+delighted, as one who watches from the side-lines the opening of
+a lively game.
+
+"Well played, sir," he ejaculated; "well played, indeed. Score one
+for you, Uncle."
+
+"The approbation of the young is the consolation of the aged,"
+murmured the professor sententiously, as if it were a quotation
+from Plutarch. "But let us hear what our friend Hardman has to say
+about the German language and the Germanic theory of education. It
+is his turn."
+
+"I throw you in the German language," answered Hardman, rather
+tartly. "I don't profess to admire  it or defend it. But nobody
+can deny its utility for the things that are taught in it. You can
+learn more science from half a dozen recent German books than from
+a whole library of Latin and Greek. Besides,  you must admit that
+the Germans are great classical scholars too."
+
+"Rather neat," commented Dick; "you touched him there, Mr. Hardman.
+Now, Uncle!"
+
+"I do not admit," said the professor firmly, "that the Germans are
+great classical scholars. They are great students, that is all.
+The difference is immense. Far be it from me to deny the value of
+the patient and laborious researches of the Germans in the grammar
+and syntax of the ancient languages and in archaeology. They are
+painstaking  to a painful degree. They gather facts as bees gather
+pollen, indefatigably. But when it comes to making honey they go
+dry. They cannot interpret, they can only instruct. They do not
+comprehend, they only classify. Name me one recent German book of
+classical interpretation to compare in  sweetness and light with
+Jowett's 'Dialogues of Plato' or Butcher's 'Some Aspects of the
+Greek Genius' or Croiset's 'Histoire de la Litterature Grecque.'
+You can't do it," he ended, with a note of triumph.
+
+"Of course not," replied Hardman sharply. "I never claimed to know
+anything about classical literature or scholarship. My point at
+the beginning--you have cleverly led the discussion away from it,
+like one of your old sophists--the point I made was that Greek and
+Latin are dead languages, and therefore practically worthless in
+the modern world. Let us go back to that and discuss it fairly and
+leave the Germans out."
+
+"But that, my dear fellow, is precisely what you cannot do. It
+is partly because they have insisted on treating Latin and Greek
+as dead that the Germans  have become what they are--spectacled
+barbarians,  learned Huns, veneered Vandals. In older times it was
+not so bad. They had some perception  of the everlasting current
+of life in the classics.  When the Latin spirit touched them for a
+while, they acquired a sense of form, they produced some literature
+that was good--Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller. But it was a
+brief illumination, and the darkness that followed it was deeper
+than ever.  Who are their foremost writers to-day? The Hauptmanns
+and the Sudermanns, gropers in obscurity, violent sentimentalists,
+'bigots to laxness,' Dr.  Johnson would have called them. Their
+world is a moral and artistic chaos agitated by spasms of hysteria.
+Their work is a mass of decay touched with gleams of phosphorescence.
+The Romans would have called it _immunditia_. What is your new
+American word for that kind of thing, Richard?  I heard you use it
+the other day."
+
+"Punk," responded Dick promptly. "Sometimes, if it's very sickening,
+we call it pink punk."
+
+"All right," interrupted Hardman impatiently.  "Say what you like
+about Hauptmann and Sudermann.  They are no friends of mine. Be as
+ferocious with them as you please. But you surely do not mean to
+claim that the right kind of study and understanding of the classics
+could have had any practical influence on the German character, or
+any value in saving the German Empire from its horrible blunders."
+
+"Precisely that is what I do mean."
+
+"But how?"
+
+"Through the mind, _animus_, the intelligent  directing spirit
+which guides human conduct in all who have passed beyond the stage
+of mere barbarism."
+
+"You exaggerate the part played by what you call the mind. Human
+conduct is mainly a matter of heredity and environment. Most of it
+is  determined by instinct, impulse, and habit."
+
+"Granted, for the sake of argument. But may there not be a mental
+as well as a physical  inheritance, an environment of thought as
+well  as of bodily circumstances?"
+
+"Perhaps so. Yes, I suppose that is true to a certain extent."
+
+"A poor phrase, my dear Hardman; but let it pass. Will you admit
+that there may be habits of thinking and feeling as well as habits
+of doing and making things?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And do you recognize a difference between bad habits and good
+habits?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"And you agree that this difference exists both in mental and
+in physical affairs? For example, you would call the foreman of a
+machine-shop who directed his work in accordance with the natural
+laws of his material and of his steam or electric power a man of
+good habits, would you not?"
+
+"Undoubtedly."
+
+"And you would not deny him this name, but would rather emphasize
+it, if in addition he had the habit of paying regard to the moral
+and social laws which condition the welfare and efficiency of his
+workmen; for example, self-control, cheerfulness,  honesty, fair
+play, honor, human kindness, and so on. If he taught these things,
+not only by word but by deed, you would call him an excellent
+foreman, would you not?"
+
+"Without a question. That machine-shop would be a great success,
+a model."
+
+"But suppose your foreman had none of these good mental and moral
+habits. Suppose he was proud, overbearing, dishonest, unfair, and
+cruel.  Do you not believe he would have a bad influence upon his
+men? Would not the shop, no matter what kind of work it turned out,
+become a nest of evil and a menace to its neighbors?"
+
+"It surely would."
+
+"What, then, would you do with the foreman?"
+
+"I would try to teach him better. If that failed, I would discharge
+him."
+
+"In what method and by what means would you endeavor to teach him?"
+
+"By all the means that I could command. By precept and by example,
+by warning him of his faults and by showing him better ways, by
+wholesome books and good company."
+
+"And if he refused to learn; if he remained  obstinate; if he
+mocked you and called you a  hypocrite; if he claimed that his way
+was the best, in fact the only way, divinely inspired, and therefore
+beyond all criticism, then you would throw him out?"
+
+"Certainly, and quickly! I should regard him as morally insane,
+and try my best to put him where he could do no more harm. But tell
+me why this protracted imitation of Socrates? Where are you trying
+to lead me? Do you want me to say that the German Kaiser is a very
+bad foreman of his shop; that he has got it into a horrible mess
+and made it despised and hated by all the other shops; that he ought
+to be put out? If that is your point, I am with you in advance."
+
+"Right you are!" cried Dick joyously. "Can the Kaiser! We all agree
+to that. And here the bout ends, with honors for both sides, and
+a special prize for the Governor."
+
+The professor smiled, recognizing in the name more affection than
+disrespect. He leaned forward in his chair, lighting a fresh cigar
+with gusto.
+
+"Not yet," he said, "O too enthusiastic youth!  Our friend here has
+not yet come to the point at which I was aiming. The application of
+my remarks  to the Kaiser--whom I regard as a gifted paranoiac--is
+altogether too personal and limited.  I was thinking of something
+larger and more important.  Do you give me leave to develop the
+idea?"
+
+"Fire away, sir," said Dick.
+
+Hardman nodded his assent. "I should like very much  to hear in
+what possible way you connect the misconduct  of Germany, which
+I admit, with your idea of the present  value of classical study,
+which I question."
+
+"In this way," said the professor earnestly.  "Germany has been
+living for fifty years with a closed mind. Oh, I grant you it was an
+active mind, scientific, laborious, immensely patient. But it was
+an ingrowing mind. Sure of its own superiority, it took no counsel
+with antiquity and scorned the advice of its neighbors. It was
+intent on producing  something entirely new and all its own--a purely
+German _Kultur_, independent of the past, and  irresponsible
+to any laws except those of Germany's interests and needs. Hence
+it fell into bad habits of thought and feeling, got into trouble,
+and brought infinite trouble upon the world."
+
+"And do you claim," interrupted Hardman, "that this would have been
+prevented by reading the classics? Would that have been the only
+and efficient cure for Germany's disease? Rather a large claim,
+that!"
+
+"Much too large," replied the professor. "I did not make it. In
+the first place, it may be that Germany's trouble had gone beyond
+any cure but the knife. In the second place, I regard the  intelligent
+reading of the Bible and the vital  apprehension of the real spirit
+of Christianity  as the best of all cures for mental and moral ills.
+All that I claim for the classics--the works of the  greatest of
+the Greek and Roman writers--is that  they have in them a certain
+remedial and sanitary  quality. They contain noble thoughts in noble
+forms.  They show the strength of self-restraint. They breathe the
+air of clearness and candor. They set forth ideals of character
+and conduct which are elevating.  They also disclose the weakness
+and the ugliness of things mean and base. They have the broad and
+generous spirit of the true _literae humaniores._ They reveal
+the springs of civilization and lead us--
+
+
+   'To the glory that was Greece,
+    To the grandeur that was Rome.'
+
+
+Now these are precisely the remedies 'indicated,' as the physicians
+say, for the cure, or at least the mitigation, of the specific bad
+habits which finally caused the madness of Germany."
+
+"Please tell us, sir," asked Dick gravely, "how you mean us to
+take that. Do you really think it would have done any good to those
+brutes who ravaged Belgium and outraged France to read Tacitus or
+Virgil or the Greek tragedies? They couldn't have done it, anyhow."
+
+"Probably not," answered the professor, while Hardman sat staring
+intently into the fire,  "probably not. But suppose the leaders
+and guides of Germany (her masters, in effect, who moulded and
+_kultured_ the people to serve their nefarious purpose of
+dominating the world by violence), suppose these masters had really
+known the meaning and felt the truth of the Greek tragedies, which
+unveil reckless  arrogance--_Hybris_--as the fatal sin,
+hateful to the gods and doomed to an inevitable Nemesis. Might not
+this truth, filtering through the masters to the people, have led
+them to the abatement of the ruinous pride which sent Germany out
+to subjugate the other nations in 1914?  The egregious General von
+der Goltz voiced the insane arrogance which made this war when he
+said, 'The nineteenth century saw a German Empire,  the twentieth
+shall see a German world.'
+
+"Or suppose the Teutonic teachers and pastors had read with
+understanding and taken to heart the passages of Csesar in which he
+curtly describes the violent and thievish qualities of the ancient
+Germans--how they spread desolation around them to protect their
+borders, and encouraged their young men in brigandage in order to
+keep them in practice.  Might not these plain lessons have been
+used as a warning to the people of modern Germany to discourage
+their predatory propensities and their habits of devastation and to
+hold them back from their relapse into the _Schrecklichkeit_
+of savage  warfare? George Meredith says a good thing in 'Diana
+of the Crossways': 'Before you can civilize a man, you must first
+de-barbarize him.' That is the trouble with the Germans, especially
+their leaders and masters.  They have never gotten rid of their
+fundamental barbarism,  the idolatry of might above right.
+
+
+    They have only put on a varnish of civilization.
+    It cracks and peels off in the heat.
+
+
+"Take one more illustration. Suppose these German thought-masters
+and war-lords had really understood and assimilated the true greatness
+of the conception of the old Roman Empire as it is shown, let us
+say, by Virgil. You remember that splendid passage in the Sixth
+Book of the AEneid where the Romans are called to remember that it
+is their mission 'to crown Peace with Law, to spare the humbled,
+and to subdue and tame the proud.' Might not sucn a noble doctrine
+have detached the Germans a little from their blind devotion to
+the Hohenzollern-Hollweg conception of the modern pinchbeck German
+Empire--a predatory state, greedy to gain new territory but incapable
+of ruling  it when gained, scornful of the rights of smaller peoples,
+oppressing them when subjugated, as she has oppressed Poland and
+Schleswig-Holstein and Alsace-Lorraine, a clumsy and exterminating
+tyrant in her own colonies, as she has shown herself in East and
+West Africa? I tell you that a vital perception of what the Roman
+Empire really meant in its palmy days might have been good medicine
+for Germany.  It might have taught her to make herself fit for
+power before seeking to grasp it."
+
+"Granted, granted," broke in Hardman, impatiently  poking the fire.
+"You can't say anything about Germany too severe to suit me. Whatever
+she needed to keep her from committing the criminal  blunder of
+this war, it is certain that she did not get it. The blunder was
+made and the price must be paid. But what I say now, as I said at
+the beginning, is that Latin and Greek are dead languages. For us,
+for the future, for the competitions  of the modern industrial and
+social era, the classics are no good. For a few ornamental persons
+a knowledge of them may be a pleasing accomplishment.  But they are
+luxuries, not necessaries. They belong to a bygone age. They have
+nothing to tell us about the things we most need to know--chemistry
+and physics, engineering and intensive agriculture,  the discovery
+of new forms and applications of power, the organization of labor
+and the distribution  of wealth, the development of mechanical skill
+and the increase of production--these are the things that we must
+study. I say they are the only things that will count for success
+in the new democracy."
+
+"That is what _you_ say," replied Professor De Vries dryly.
+"But the wisest men of the world have said something very different.
+No democracy ever has survived, or ever will survive, without
+an aristocracy at the heart of it. Not an aristocracy of birth
+and privilege, but one of worth and intelligence;  not a band of
+hereditary lords, but a company of well-chosen leaders. Their value
+will depend not so much upon their technical knowledge and skill
+as upon the breadth of their mind, the clearness  of their thought,
+the loftiness of their motives, the balance of their judgment, and
+the strength of their devotion to duty. For the cultivation of these
+things I say--pardon the apparent contradiction of what _you_
+said--I say the study of the classics has been and still is of the
+greatest value."
+
+"What did George Washington know about the classics?" Hardman
+interrupted sharply. "He was one of your aristocrats of democracy,
+I suppose?"
+
+"He was," answered the professor blandly, "and he knew more about
+the classics than, I fear, you do, my dear Hardman. At all events,
+he understood  what was meant when he was called 'the Cincinnatus
+of the West'--and he lived up to the ideal, otherwise we should
+have had no  American Republic.
+
+"But let us not drop to personalities. What I maintain is that
+Latin and Greek are not dead languages, because they still convey
+living thoughts.  The real success of a democracy--the production
+of a finer manhood--depends less upon mechanics than upon morale.
+For that the teachings of the classics are excellent. They have a
+bracing and a steadying quality. They instil a sense of order and
+they inspire a sense of admiration, both of which are needed by
+the people--especially the plain people--of a sane democracy. The
+classics are fresher, younger, more vital and encouraging than most
+modern books. They have lessons for us to-day--believe me--great
+words for the present crisis and the pressing duty of the hour."
+
+"Give us an example," said Dick; "something classic to fit this
+war."
+
+"I have one at hand," responded the professor promptly. He went to
+the book-shelves and pulled out a small brown volume with a slip
+of paper in it. He opened the book at the marked place. "It is from
+the Eighth Satire of Juvenal, beginning at line 79. I will read
+the Latin first, and afterward a little version which I made the
+other day."
+
+The old man rolled the lines out in his sonorous voice, almost
+chanting:
+
+
+   "'Esto bonus miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem
+    Integer; ambiguae si quando citabere testis
+    Incertaeque rei, Phalaris licet imperet ut sis
+    Falsus et admoto dictet periuria tauro,
+    _Summum crede nefas, animam praeferre pudori
+    Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.'"_
+
+"Please to translate, sir," said Dick, copying exactly the professor's
+classroom phrase and manner.
+
+"To gratify my nephew," said the professor, nodding and winking at
+Hardman. "But, understand,  this is not a real translation. It is
+only a paraphrase. Here it is:
+
+
+   "Be a good soldier, and a guardian just;
+    Likewise an upright judge. Let no one thrust
+    You in a dubious cause to testify,
+    Through fear of tyrant's vengeance, to a lie.
+    Count it a baseness if your soul prefer
+    Safety above what Honor asks of her:
+    And hold it manly life itself to give,
+    Rather than lose the things for which we live.
+
+
+It is not half as good as the Latin. But it gives the meaning. How
+do you like it, Richard?"
+
+"Fine!" answered the young man quickly; "especially the last lines.
+They are great." He hesitated slightly, and then went on. "Perhaps
+I ought to tell you now, sir, that I have signed up and got my
+papers for the training-school at Madison Barracks. I hope you will
+not be angry with me."
+
+The old man put both hands on the lad's shoulders  and looked at
+him with a suspicious moisture in his eyes. He swallowed hard a
+couple of times.  You could see the big Adam's apple moving up and
+down in his wrinkled throat.
+
+"Angry!" he cried. "Why, boy, I love you for it."
+
+Hardman, who was a thoroughly good fellow at heart, held out his
+hand.
+
+"Good for you, Dick! But I must be going now.  I am putting up at
+the Ivy. Will you walk up with me? I'd like to have a word with
+you."
+
+The two men walked in silence along the shady, moon-flecked streets
+of the tranquil old university town. Then the elder one spoke.
+
+"You have done the right thing, I am sure. That officers'
+training-school is a good place to get a  practical education. When
+you are through, how would you like to have a post in the Ordnance
+Department at  Washington? I have some influence there and believe
+I could get you in without difficulty."
+
+"Thanks, a lot," answered the lad modestly.  "You're awfully kind.
+But, if you don't mind my saying so, I think I'd rather have service
+at the front--that is, if I can qualify for it."
+
+There was another long silence before Hardman spoke again, with an
+apparent change of subject:
+
+"I wish you would tell me what you really think of your uncle's
+views on the classics, you and the other fellows of your age in
+the university."
+
+Dick hesitated a moment before he replied:
+
+"Well, personally, you know, I believe what Uncle says is usually
+about right. He has the habit of it. But I allow when he gets
+on his hobby he rides rather hard. Most of the other fellows have
+given up the classics--they like the modern-language course with
+sciences better--perhaps it's softer.  They say not; but I know
+the classics are hard enough. I flunked out on my Greek exam junior
+year. So, you see, I'm not a very good judge. But, anyhow, wasn't
+the bit he read us from Juvenal simply fine? And didn't he read
+it well? I've felt that a hundred times, but never knew how to say
+it."
+
+
+
+It was in the early fall of 1918, more than a year later, that
+Hardman came once more into the familiar library at Calvinton. He
+had read the casualty list of the last week of August and came to
+condole with his friend De Vries.
+
+The old man sat in the twilight of the tranquil book-lined room,
+leaning back in his armchair, with an open letter on the table
+before him. He gave his hand cordially to Hardman and thanked him
+for his sympathetic words. He talked quietly and naturally about
+Dick, and confessed how much he should miss the boy--as it were,
+his only son.
+
+"Yes," he said quietly. "I am going to be lonely, but I am not
+forsaken. I shall be sad sometimes, but never sorry--always proud
+of my boy. Would you  like to see this letter? It is the last that
+he wrote."
+
+It was a young, simple letter, full of cheerful joking and personal
+details and words of affection which the shy lad would never have
+spoken face to face. At the end he wrote:
+
+"Well, dear Governor, this is a rough life, and some parts are
+not easy to bear. But I want you to know that I was never happier
+in all my days.  I know that we are fighting for a good cause,
+justice,  and freedom, and a world made clean from this beastly
+German militarism. The things that the Germans have done to France
+and Belgium must be stopped, and they must never be done again.
+We want a decent world to live in, and we are going to have it, no
+matter what it costs. Of course I should like to live through it
+all, if I can do it with honor. But a man never can tell what is
+going to happen. And I certainly would rather give up my life than
+the things we are fighting for--the things you taught me to believe
+are according to the will of God. So good-night for the present,
+Uncle, and sleep well.
+
+"Your loving nephew and son,
+
+"DICK."
+
+Hardman's hand shook a little as he laid the paper on the table.
+
+"It is a beautiful letter," he said.
+
+"Yes," nodded the old professor, putting his hand upon it; "it is
+a classic; very clear and simple and high-minded. The German Crown
+Prince says our American soldiers do not know what they are fighting
+for. But Richard knew. It was to defend 'the things for which we
+live' that he gladly gave his life."
+
+September, 1918.
+
+
+
+
+
+HALF-TOLD TALES
+
+
+
+
+THE NEW ERA AND CARRY ON
+
+
+The Commandant of the Marine Hospital was at his desk, working
+hard, when the door of the room was flung open and the Officer of
+the Day rushed in.
+
+"Sir," he exploded, "the New Era has come."
+
+"Very likely, Mr. Corker," answered the Commandant.  "It has been
+coming continually since the world began. But is that any reason
+why you should enter without knocking, and with your coat covered
+with bread-crumbs and cigarette-ashes?"
+
+So the Officer of the Day went outside, brushed his coat, knocked
+at the door, and awaited orders.
+
+"Mr. Corker," said the Commandant, "have the kindness to bring me
+your report on the condition  of yesterday's cases, and let me know
+what operations are indicated for to-day. Good morning.  Orderly,
+my compliments to the Executive Officer, and I wish to see him at
+once."
+
+When the Executive Officer arrived, he began:
+
+"Sir, the New Era--"
+
+"Quite so, Mr. Greel, but you understand this Hospital has to
+carry on as required in any kind of an era. How many patients did
+we receive yesterday?  Good. Have we enough bedding and provisions?
+Bad. Attend to it immediately, and let me know the result of your
+efforts to remedy a situation which should never have arisen. The
+Navy cannot be run on hot air."
+
+As the Executive Officer went out he held the door open for the Head
+Nurse to pass in. She was a fine, upstanding creature, tremulous
+with emotion.
+
+"Oh, Doctor," she cried, "I simply must tell you about the New Era.
+Woman Suffrage is going to save the world."
+
+"I hope so, Miss Dooby, it certainly needs saving.  Meantime how
+are things in the pneumonia ward?"
+
+"Two deaths last night, sir, three new cases this morning. Oxygen
+is running short: no beef-tea or milk. Five of my nurses have gone
+to attend conventions of woman--"
+
+"Slackers," interrupted the Commandant. "Put them on report for
+leaving the ship without permission.  I shall attend to their cases.
+Fill their places from the volunteer list. Be so good as to send
+the head steward here immediately."
+
+"I'm very sorry, Sir," said the steward, "but ye see it's just
+this way. The mess-boys was holdin'  a New Era mass-meetin', and
+the cook he forgot--"
+
+"Milk and beef-tea!" growled the Commandant as if they were
+swear-words. "What the devil is this new influenza that has struck
+the hospital?  Steward, you will provide what the head nurse requires
+at once. Orderly, my cap, and call Mr.  Greel to accompany me on
+inspection."
+
+In the galley the fires were out, the ovens cold, the soup-kettles
+empty, and all the cooks,  dish-washers, and scrubbers were absorbing
+the eloquence of the third assistant pie-maker, who stood on an
+empty biscuit-box and explained the glories of the one-hour day in
+the New Era.
+
+'"Ten_shun!_" yelled the Orderly, and the force of habit
+brought the men up, stiff and silent. The Commandant looked around
+the circle, grinning.
+
+"My word!" he cried, "what a beautiful sight!  What do you think
+this is--a blooming debating society? Wrong! It's a hospital, with
+near a thousand sick and wounded to take care of. And it's going
+to be done, see? And you're going to help do it, see? No work--no
+pay and no food!  Neglect of orders means extra duty and no
+liberty--perhaps a couple of twenty-four-hour days in the brig. That's the
+rule in all eras, see? Now get busy, all of you. Chow at twelve as
+usual. Carry on, men."
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," they answered cheerily, for they were weary of
+the third assistant pie-maker's brand of talk and felt the pangs
+of healthy hunger.
+
+Then came the second engineer, out of breath with running, followed
+by two or three helpers.
+
+"Fire, captain," he gasped, "fire in the fuel-room--awful
+blaze--started in the wood box--cigarette--we were just settin'
+round talkin' over what we were goin' to do in the New Era, an'
+the first thing we knew it was burnin' like--"
+
+"The New Era," snapped the Commandant, "and be damned to it! Sound
+the fire-call. All hands to quarters. Lead along the hose. Follow
+me," he cried, hurrying forward through the gathering  smoke, "this
+ship must be saved."
+
+And so it was--strictly in conformity with the old laws that fire
+burns, water quenches, and every man must do his duty promptly. On
+these ancient principles, and others equally venerable, the hospital
+carried on its good work. But the Commandant made one  new rule.
+It cost five dollars to mention the New Era within its walls.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PRIMITIVE AND HIS SANDALS
+
+
+"I am sick of all this," said the Great Author, sweeping his hand
+over the silver-laden dinner-table.  He seemed to include in his
+gesture the whole house and the broad estate surrounding it. "It
+bores me, and I don't believe it can be right."
+
+His wife, at the other end of the table, shining in her low-necked
+dress with diamonds on her breast and in her hair, leaned forward
+anxiously, knowing her husband's temperament.
+
+"But, Nicholas," she said, "what do you mean?  You have earned all
+this by your work as a writer.  You are the greatest man in the
+country. You are entitled to a fine house and a large estate."
+
+He gravely nodded his big head with its flamboyant  locks, and lit
+a fresh cigarette.
+
+"Quite right, my dear," said he, "you are always right on practical
+affairs. But, you see, this is an artistic affair. My books are
+realistic and radical.  They teach the doctrine of the universal
+level, that no man can be above other men. They have made poverty,
+perhaps not exactly popular, but at least romantic. My villains
+are always rich and my heroes poor. The people like this; but it is
+rather a strain to believe it and keep on believing it. If my work
+is to hold the public it must have illustrations--moving pictures,
+you know! Something in character! Nobody else can do that as well
+as I can. It will be better than many advertisements.  I am going
+to become a virtuous peasant, a son of the soil, a primitive."
+
+His wife laughed, with a slight nervous tremor in her voice. She
+knew her husband's temperament, to be sure, but she never knew just
+how far it would carry him.
+
+"I think you must be a little crazy, Nicholas," she said.
+
+"Thank you, Alexandra," he answered, "thank you for the temperate
+flattery. Evidently you have heard the old proverb about genius
+and madness.  But why not make the compliment complete and say
+'absolutely crazy'?"
+
+"Well," she replied, "because I do not understand  just what you
+propose to do. Are you going to impoverish yourself and the whole
+family? Are you thinking of turning over your farms to these stupid
+peasants who will let them go to rack and ruin? Will you give your
+property to the village council who will drink it up in a month?
+You know how much money Peter needs; he is a member of twelve
+first-class clubs. And Olga's husband is not earning much. Are you
+going to starve your children and grandchildren for the sake of an
+idea of consistency in art?"
+
+The Great Author was now standing in front of the fireplace, warming
+himself and filling a pipe.  The flames behind him made an aureole
+in his  extravagant white hair and beard. He smiled and puffed
+slowly at his pipe. At last he answered.
+
+"My dear, you go too fast and too far. You know I am enthusiastic,
+but have you ever known me to be silly? It would be wrong to make
+you and the children suffer. I have no right to do that."
+
+[Illustration: I am going to become a virtuous peasant, a son of
+the soil, a primitive]
+
+She nodded her head emphatically, and a look of comprehension spread
+over her face.  "Suppose," he continued, "suppose that I should
+make over the real estate and farms to you--you are an excellent
+manager. And suppose that I should put the personal estate, including
+copyrights, into a trust, the income to be paid to you and the
+children. You would take care of me while I became a primitive,
+wouldn't you?"
+
+"I would," she answered, "you know I would.  But think how
+uncomfortable it will be for you.  While we are living in luxury,
+you--"
+
+"Don't worry about that," he interrupted with a laugh. "I shall
+have all the luxury I want: flannel shirts, loose around the neck,
+instead of these infernal  stiff collars; velveteen trousers and
+jacket instead of this waiter's uniform; and I shall go barefoot
+when the weather is suitable--do you understand? Barefoot  in the
+summer grass--it will be immense."
+
+"But your food," she asked, "how will you manage that on a primitive
+basis?"
+
+"You will manage it," he replied, "you know I have always preferred
+beefsteak and onions to any French dish. Champagne does not agree
+with me.  I'd rather have a glass of the straight stuff,  without
+any gas in it."
+
+"But your sleeping arrangements," she murmured,  "are you going to
+leave the house? Our bedroom is not exactly primitive."
+
+"No fear of it," he answered. "There is a little room beyond your
+bathroom. Put an iron cot in there, with a soft mattress, linen
+sheets, and light blankets. I'll do my morning wash at the pump in
+the yard, for the sake of the picture. When I want a bath you'll
+leave the door of the room open if you are not actually in the
+tub."
+
+"Nicholas," she said, with a Mona Lisa smile, "for an author you
+have a very clever way of putting  things. But suppose we have
+guests at the house, you can't come to dinner in dirty clothes and
+with bare feet."
+
+"Certainly not," he answered. "I shall put on clean flannels, clean
+velveteens, and sandals."
+
+"Sandals," she murmured, "sandals for dinner are simply wonderful.
+Do you think I could--"
+
+"Not at all, my dear," said the Great Author firmly. "Your present
+style of dress becomes you amazingly. I am the only one who has to
+do  the primitive."
+
+So the arrangements were completed. The interviewers  who came
+to the house described the Great Author in his loose flannels and
+velveteens, with bare feet, returning from labor in the fields.
+The moving pictures were full of him. But the sandals did not
+appear. There were no flash-lights permitted at the part-primitive
+dinner-table.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DIANA AND THE LIONS
+
+
+In the darkest hour before the dawn, Diana floated away from her
+Garden Tower and came down between the  Lions on the Library Steps.
+
+At first, she did not know they were Lions. She thought they were
+Cats, and so she was afraid. For she was very lightly clad; and
+(except in Egypt) Cats are terrible to undomesticated goddesses.
+Diana shivered as she strung her bow for defense.  She felt that
+she was divine, but she knew that she had cold feet.
+
+In truth, the Library Steps were wet and glistening,  for there had
+been a shower after midnight.  But now the gibbous moon was giving
+a silent imitation  of an arc-light high in the western heaven.
+Her beams silver-plated the weird architecture of the shrines of
+Commerce which face the great Temple dedicated to the Three Muses
+of New York--Astor, Lenox, and Tilden.
+
+But on the awful animals guarding the steps the light was florid,
+like a flush of sunburn discovered by the ablution of a warranted
+complexion cream.  They were wonderfully pink, and Diana hastened
+to draw an arrow from her quiver, for it seemed to her as if her
+feline neighbors were beginning to glow with rage.
+
+"Do not shoot," said the ruddier one; "we are not angry, we are
+only blushing." And he glanced at her costume.
+
+Diana was astonished to hear a masculine voice utter such a modest
+sentiment. But being a woman, she knew that the first word does
+not count.
+
+"Cats never blush," she answered boldly, "no matter how big they
+are."
+
+"But we are not Cats," they cried, ramping suddenly  like crests
+on a millionaire's note-paper. "We are Lions!"
+
+Diana smiled at this, for now she felt safe,  remembering that when
+a male begins to boast he is not dangerous.
+
+"Roar a little for me, please," she said, laying down her unconcealed
+weapon.
+
+"Impossible," said the Northern Lion, "a city ordinance forbids
+unnecessary noise."
+
+"Nonsense!" interrupted the Southern Lion.  "Who would not break
+a law to oblige a lady?"
+
+"Let us compromise," said the Northern Lion, "and  give her our
+reproduction of an automobile horn."
+
+"No," said the Southern Lion, "we will give her our automatic record
+of a Book-Advertisement; it is louder."
+
+Then Diana trembled, indeed. But she bravely continued smiling,
+and said: "Thank you a thousand  times for doing it once! And now
+please tell me what kind of Lions you are."
+
+"Literary Lions," was their prompt and  unanimous reply.
+
+"Ah," she cried, clapping her hands with a charming gesture, "how
+glad I am to meet you! I have been in New York more than twenty
+years and never seen any one like you before! Come and sit beside
+me and talk."
+
+The Lions looked at each other rather sheepishly, and glanced up
+and down the street, as if fearing the approach of a city ordinance.
+But there was no one in sight except Diana, so they shook their
+literary locks into a becoming disorder and sat on the steps with
+her, purring gently.
+
+"Now tell me," she said, "who you are."
+
+If she had been less beautiful they would have resented this. But,
+as it was, they looked sorry, and asked her if she had never read
+"Who's Who in America"? She shook her head, and admitted that she
+had not read it all through.
+
+"Well," said her neighbor on the south, "this is rather an offhand
+_soiree,_ and we may as well cut out proper names. But I will
+put you wise to the fact that I am the Magazine Lion. I got away
+from Roosevelt in Africa. He called me 'Mucky,' and I made tracks.
+Here he cannot hurt me, for they will never let that man do anything
+in good old New York, not even touch a Tiger."
+
+"And I," said her neighbor on the north, "I am the Academic Lion, of
+whom you must have heard.  My character is noted for its concealed
+sweetness, and my style leaves nothing to be hoped for. I am
+literally a man of letters, for I have seventeen degrees. Usually
+I look literary-lean and nobly dissatisfied, but yesterday I
+swallowed a British Female Novelist by accident, and that accounts
+for my inartistic air of cheerfulness. I won my splendid reputation
+by telling other Lions how they ought to have done their little
+tricks. But now, tired of that, I have gone into politics. This is
+my first public office."
+
+Diana was somewhat confused and benumbed by these personally conducted
+biographies, but she was too well-bred not to appear interested.
+
+"How lovely," she murmured, "to sit between two such Great
+Personages! I wonder what brought poor little Me to such an honor.
+And, by the way, how do you happen to be just here? What is this
+beautiful building behind you? Is it your Palace?"
+
+"It is a Library," said the Academic Lion, with a superior tone.
+
+"The biggest book-heap in America," said the Magazine Lion in his
+vivid way. "We have them all beaten to a finish--except the old
+junk-shop down in Washington."
+
+"You forget Boston," said the Academic Lion.
+
+"Who wouldn't?" growled the Magazine Lion.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," asked Diana, with her most engaging and
+sprightly air, "that this splendid place is a Library, all full of
+books, and that you are its most prominent figures, its figureheads,
+so to speak? How interesting! I have travelled a great deal--under
+the name of Pasht or Bast, in Egypt, where the Cats liked me;
+and under the name of Artemis in Greece; and under my own name
+in Italy. Believe me, I have seen all things that the moon shines
+upon. But I do not remember having seen Lions on a Library before.
+How original!  How appropriate! How suggestive! But what does it
+suggest? What are you here for?"
+
+"For educational purposes," said the Academic Lion.
+
+"To catch the eye," said the Magazine Lion, "same as head-lines in
+a newspaper."
+
+"I see," exclaimed Diana. "You are here to keep the  people from
+getting at the books? How modern!"
+
+This remark made the Academic Lion look like a Sphinx, as if he
+knew something but did not want to tell. But the Magazine Lion was
+distinctly flattered.
+
+"Right you are," said he cheerfully, "or next door to it. We don't
+propose to keep the people out, only the authors. Why, when this
+place was publicly opened there was not a single author in the
+exhibit, except John Bigelow."
+
+"Why did you not keep him out?" asked Diana.
+
+"We were not on the spot, then," said the Lion.  "Besides, there
+are some things that even a Lion does not dare to do."
+
+"But I do not understand," said Diana, "precisely  why authors
+should be kept away from a library."
+
+The Magazine Lion laughed. "Silly little thing!" he said, with a
+fascinating tone of virile condescension. "An author's business is
+to write books, not to read them. If he reads, he grows  intelligent
+and thoughtful and careful about his work.  Those old books spoil
+him for the modern market.  But if he just goes ahead and writes
+whatever comes into his head, he can do it with a bang, and everybody
+sits up and pays attention. That's the only way to be original.
+See?"
+
+"Excuse me," broke in the Academic Lion, "but you go too far,
+brother. Authors should be  encouraged to read, but only under
+critical guidance and professorial direction. Otherwise they will
+not be able to classify the books, and tabulate their writers, and
+know which ones to admire and praise.  How can you expect a mere
+author to comprehend the faulty method of Shakespeare, or the ethical
+commonplaceness of Dickens and Thackeray, or the vital Ibsenism of
+Bernard Shaw and the other near-Ibsens, without assistance?"
+
+"But the other people," asked Diana, "what is going to happen to
+them if you let them go in free and browse among the books?"
+
+"They are less important," answered the Academic  Lion. "Besides we
+expect soon to establish a cranial, neurological, and psychopathic
+examination  which will determine the subliminal, temperamental
+needs of every applicant. Then we classify the readers in groups,
+and the books in lists, and the whole thing works with automatic
+precision."
+
+"And I am going to make the book-lists!" said the Magazine Lion,
+ecstatically wagging his tail, and half-unconsciously putting his
+paw around the lady's waist in a spirit of pure comradeship.
+
+But she gently slipped away, stood up, and gracefully  covered a
+yawn with her hand.
+
+"I am ever so much obliged to you Literary Lions for not eating
+me," said she. "Probably I should have disagreed with you even
+more than your  conversation has with me. I am quite sleepy. And
+the moon has almost disappeared. I must be going where I can bid
+it good night."
+
+So Diana rose, with shining limbs, above the housetops, and
+vanished toward her Garden Tower.  The Lions looked disconcerted.
+"Old-fashioned, Victorian prude!" said one, "Brazen hussy!" said
+the other. And they climbed back on their Pedestals, resuming their
+supercilious expression.  There I suppose they will stay, no matter
+what Diana may think of them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE HERO AND TIN SOLDIERS
+
+
+On December twenty-fifth, 1918, that little white house in the park
+was certainly the happiest dwelling  in Calvinton. It was simply
+running over with Christmas.
+
+You see, there had come to it a most wonderful present, a surprise
+full of tears and laughter. Captain  Walter Mayne reached home on
+Christmas Eve.
+
+For a while they had thought that he would never come back at all.
+News had been received that he was grievously wounded in France--shot
+to pieces, in effect, leading his men near Chateau-Thierry. His
+life hung on the ragged edge of those wounds. But his wife Katharine
+always believed that he would pull through. So he did. But he was
+lacking a leg, his right arm was knocked out of commission for the
+present, and various other _souvenirs de la grande guerre_
+were inscribed upon his body.
+
+Then word arrived that he was coming on a transport, with other
+wounded, to be patched up in a hospital on Staten Island. So his
+wife Katharine smiled her way through innumerable entanglements
+of red tape and went to nurse him. Then she set her steady hand to
+pull all the wires necessary to get him discharged and sent home.
+Christmas was in her heart and she would not be denied. So it came
+to pass that the one-legged Hero was in his own house on the happy
+day, and joy was  bubbling all around him.
+
+When the old Pastor entered, late in the afternoon,  the Christmas-tree
+was twinkling with lights, the children swarming and buzzing all over
+the place, so that he was dazed for a moment. There were Walter's
+mother and his aunt and his sisters-in-law, boys and girls of various
+sizes, and a jubilant and entrancing baby. The Pastor took it all
+in, and was glad of it, but his mind was on the Hero.
+
+Katharine, who always understood everything, whispered softly:
+"Walter is waiting to see you, Doctor. He is in his study, just
+across the hall."
+
+_Waiting?_ Well, what can a man whose right leg has been cut
+off above the knee, and who has not yet been able to get an artificial
+one--what can he do but wait?
+
+The room was rather dimly lighted; brilliance is not good for the
+eyes of the wounded. Walter was in a long chair in the corner; his
+face was bronzed, drawn and lined a little by suffering; but steady
+and cheerful as ever, with the eager look which had made his students
+listen to him when he talked to them about English literature.
+
+"My dear Walter," said the Pastor, "my dear boy, we are so glad
+to have you home with us again.  We are very proud of you. You are
+our Hero."
+
+"Thank you," said Walter, "it is mighty good to be home again. But
+there is no hero business about it. I only did what all the other
+Americans who went over there did--fought my--excuse me, my best,
+against the beastly Germans."
+
+"But your leg," said the Pastor impulsively, "it is gone. Aren't
+you angry about that?"
+
+Walter was silent for a moment. Then he answered.
+
+"No, I don't think angry is the right word. You remember that story
+about Nathan Hale in the Revolution--'I only regret that I have
+but one life to give to my country.' Well, I'm glad that I had two
+legs to give for my country, and  particularly glad that she only
+needed one of them."
+
+"Tell me a bit about the fighting," said the Pastor,  "I want to
+know what it was like--the hero-touch--you understand?"
+
+"Not for me," said Walter, "and certainly not now. Later on I can
+tell you something, perhaps.  But this is Christmas Day. And war?
+Well, Doctor, believe me, war is a horrible thing, full of grime and
+pain, madness, agony, hell--a thing that ought not to be. I have
+fought alongside of the other fellows to put an end to it, and
+now--"
+
+The door swung open, and Sammy, the eldest son of the house, pranced
+in.
+
+"Look, Daddy," he cried, "see what Aunt Emily has  sent me for
+Christmas--a big box of tin soldiers!"
+
+Mayne smiled as the little boy carefully laid the box on his knee;
+but there was a shadow of pain in his eyes, and he closed them
+for a few seconds, as if his mind were going back, somewhere, far
+away. Then he spoke, tenderly, but with a grave voice.
+
+"That's fine, sonny--all those tin soldiers. But don't you think
+they ought to belong to me? You have lots of other toys, you know.
+Would you give the soldiers to me?"
+
+The child looked up at him, puzzled for a moment; then a flash of
+comprehension passed over his face, and he nodded valiantly.
+
+"Sure, Father," he said, "You're the Captain.  Keep the soldiers.
+I'll play with the other toys," and he skipped out of the room.
+
+Mayne's look followed him with love. Then he turned to the old
+Pastor and a strange expression came into his face, half whimsical
+and half grim.
+
+"Doctor," he said, "will you do me a favor?  Poke up that fire till
+it blazes. That's right. Now lay this box in the hottest part of
+the flames. That's right. It will soon be gone."
+
+The elder man did what was asked, with an air of slight bewilderment,
+as one humors the fancies of an invalid. He wondered whether Mayne's
+fever had quite left him. He watched the fire bulging the lid and
+catching round the edges of the box.  Then he heard Mayne's voice
+behind him, speaking very quietly.
+
+"If ever I find my little boy _playing with tin soldiers,_ I
+shall spank him well. No, that wouldn't be quite fair, would it?
+But I shall tell him why he must not do it, and _I shall make
+him understand that it's an impossible thing."_
+
+Then the old Pastor comprehended. There was no touch of fever. The
+one-legged Hero had come home from the wars completely well and
+sound in mind. So the two men sat together in love by the Christmas
+fire, and saw the tin soldiers melt away.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SALVAGE POINT
+
+
+The Hermanns built their house at the very end of the island, five
+or six miles from the more or less violently rustic "summer-cottages"
+which adorned the hills and bluffs around the native village of
+Winterport.
+
+There was a long point running out to the southward  at the mouth
+of the great bay, rough and rocky for the most part, with little
+woods of pointed firs on it, some acres of pasture, and a few
+pockets of fertile soil lying between the stony ridges. A yellow
+farmhouse, with a red barn beside it, had nestled for near a hundred
+years in one of these hollows, buying shelter from the winter winds
+at the cost of an outlook over sea and shore.
+
+It was a large price to pay. The view from the summit of the little
+hill a few hundred yards away was superb--a wonder even on that
+wonderful coast of Maine where mountain and sea meet together,
+forest and flood kiss each other.
+
+But I suppose the old Yankee farmer knew what he wanted when he
+paid the price and snuggled his house in the hollow. I am certain
+the Hermanns knew what they wanted when they bought the whole
+point and perched their house on the very top of the hill, where
+all the winds of heaven might visit it as roughly as they pleased,
+but where nothing could rob the outlook of its ever-changing splendor
+and mystery, its fluent wonder and abiding charm.
+
+You see, the Hermanns knew what they wanted because they had come
+through a lot of trouble. I met them when they were young--no matter
+how many years ago--when they were in the thick of it.
+
+Alice Mackaye and Will Hermann had the rare luck to fall in love--a
+very real and great love--when they were in their early twenties.
+You would think that extraordinary piece of good fortune would have
+been enough to set them up for life, wouldn't you? But no. There
+was an Obstacle. And  that Obstacle came very near wrecking them
+both.
+
+Will Hermann was an artist and the son of an artist. The love of
+beauty ran in his blood. Otherwise he was poor. He earned a decent
+living by his painting, but each year's living depended on each
+year's work. Hence he was in the proletarian class.
+
+Alice Mackaye, on the other hand, belonged to the capitalist class.
+I say "belonged," because that is precisely the word to describe her
+situation.  Her father was a millionaire sugar-merchant, who lived
+in an ugly palace near Morristown, New Jersey,  and was accustomed
+to have his own way in that and other States. He was the Obstacle.
+
+He was a florid, handsome old Scotchman, orthodox in  religion,
+shrewd in business, correct in conduct, but with no more sentiment
+than a hard-shell crab, and obstinate as the devil. His fixed
+idea was that none of his daughters should ever be carried off by
+a fortune-hunter. The two older girls apparently escaped this danger
+by making fairly wealthy matches. But Alice--come away!  why should
+she take up with this impecunious painter? He was good-looking and
+had the gift of the gab, but what was that worth? If he would come
+into the sugar-business, where a place was waiting for him, and
+make good there, it would be all right. Otherwise, the affair must
+be broken off, absolutely, finally, and forever. From this you can
+see that the Obstacle was not bad-hearted, but only pig-headed.
+
+Well, for five or six years things drifted rather miserably along
+this way. Will Hermann was forbidden  the house at Morristown. Alice
+was practically a  captive; her correspondence was censored.  But
+of course, even before Marconi, wireless  communication in matters
+of this kind has always  been possible.
+
+The trouble was that the state of affairs between them, while
+conventionally correct, was thoroughly unnatural and full of peril.
+Alice, a very good girl, obedient and tractable, was in danger of
+becoming a recalcitrant and sour old maid. Will, a healthy and
+normal young man, with no bad habits, was in danger of being driven
+to them by the  emptiness and exasperation of his mind. The worst
+of it all was that both of the young people were, in accordance
+with a well-known law of nature, growing  older with what seemed
+to them a frightful and unreasonable rapidity. The years crawled
+like snails. But the sum of them rose by leaps and bounds to an
+appalling total. Alice found two grey hairs in her red-gold locks.
+Will had to use glasses for reading fine print at night. From
+their point of view, decrepitude, senility, dotage stared them in
+the face, while the bright voyage of life which they were resolved
+to make only together, was threatened  with shipwreck among the
+shoals of interminable delay.
+
+It was at this juncture of affairs that they came to me, as fine-looking
+a young couple as ever I saw.  They were good, as mortals go; they
+were loyal and upright, they wanted no scandal, no rumpus in the
+family, no trouble or pain for anybody else; but they wanted to
+belong to each other much more than they wanted to belong to any
+class, artistic, proletarian, or capitalist. And they were desperate
+because of the pertinacity of the Obstacle, whom they both respected
+fully as much as he deserved.
+
+When they had stated their case, I made my answer.
+
+"So far as I can see, the salvage of your ship of love depends
+entirely on yourselves. Mr. Hermann  is not after a fortune, he
+only wants his girl; is that so? [Hermann nodded vigorously.] And
+Miss Mackaye does not care about being supported in the manner of
+living to which she has been  accustomed; she only wants to live
+with the man whom she has chosen; is that so? [Alice blushed and
+nodded.] Well, then, why shouldn't you lay your course and sail
+ahead together? You are both of age, aren't you?"
+
+They smiled at each other. "Yes, and a little over."
+
+"But my father!" said Alice. "You know I honor him,  and I can
+never deny his authority over me."
+
+Here was the turn of the talk, the critical moment,  the point where
+the chosen counsellor had to fall back upon the ultimate reality
+of his faith.
+
+"Well," I said, "you are absolutely correct, dear daughter, in
+your feeling toward your father. He has earned his money and has
+a right to dispose of it as he will. But, you know, there is a
+statute of limitations in regard to the authority of parents over
+the _lives_ of their children. You have passed the limitation.
+What do you want to do?"
+
+"To be married to Will Hermann," she said, "for better for worse,
+for richer for poorer, I don't care.  But I don't want a family
+quarrel, a runaway match, all that horrid newspaper talk." Here
+she was evidently a little excited and on the verge of tears.
+
+"Certainly not," I hastened to reassure her, "you can't possibly
+have a runaway match, because there is nothing for you to run away
+from.  There is not a single duty in your father's house which you
+have not fulfilled, and of which your sisters can not now relieve
+you. There is no  authority in the world which has the right to
+command the sacrifice of your life to another's judgment.  There
+is only one thing that stands in your way, and that is your claim
+on a large inheritance. I understand you are quite willing to let
+that go.  You are not even 'running away' from it--that is not the
+word--you are ready to _jettison_ it."
+
+She looked puzzled, and murmured; "I don't exactly understand what
+that means."
+
+"To jettison," I said, in that learned and dispassionate manner
+which is sometimes useful in relieving an emotional situation,
+"is a seafaring phrase. It means throwing overboard a part or the
+whole of a cargo in order to save the ship. As far as I can see
+that is the question which is up to you and your best friend at
+the present moment. Are you prepared to jettison the claim on a
+big fortune for the sake of making your voyage of life together?"
+
+They looked at each other and a kind of radiance  spread over their
+faces. "Surely," they answered  with one voice. "But how can the
+marriage be arranged," asked Alice, "without a row in the family?"
+
+"Very easily," I answered. "Both of you are over age, though you
+don't look it. Our good lawyer friend Harrison will help you to
+get the license.  Fix your day for the wedding, neither secret nor
+notorious; invite anybody you like, and come to me on the day you
+have chosen. The arrangements will be made. You shall be married,
+all right."
+
+So they came, and I married them, and it was a very good job.
+
+They had some years of difficulty and uncertainty  during which
+I caught brief glimpses of them now and then, always cheerful and
+happy together.  In the course of time the Obstacle, being not at
+all bad-hearted but only pig-headed, probably relented a little, and
+finally was gathered to his fathers,  according to the common lot
+of man. The older sisters  behaved very well about the inheritance,
+and Alice was not left portionless. She brought three fine boys
+into the world. The house on Salvage Point was built by her and
+Will together.
+
+It was there that I spent a day with them, in the summer of 1918,
+after many years during which we had not met. I was on naval duty,
+with Commander  Kidd, of a certain station on the Maine coast. By
+invitation we put in with the motorboat  S.P. 297, at Salvage Point.
+So it was that I met my old friends again, and knew what had become
+of their barque of love which I had helped to save from shipwreck.
+
+The house on the peak of the hill was just what it ought to be;
+not aggressively rustic, not  obtrusively classic--white pillars
+in front of  it, and a terrace, but nothing dominating--it had the
+air of a very large and habitable lighthouse.
+
+The extraordinary thing was the arrangement of the grounds. At
+every point one came upon some reminder of salvage. On the glorious
+August day when I was there, shipwreck seemed impossible: the
+Southern Way which opened to the Ocean was dancing with gay waves;
+the blue mountains of Maine were tranquil on the horizon.
+
+"But you see," said Will Hermann, "this is really rather a dangerous
+point, though it is so beautiful. It is the gateway of the open sea,
+and there are three big ledges across it. A ship that has lost her
+bearings a little, or is driving in through thick weather, easily
+comes to grief. But there is not often a loss of life, only the
+ship goes to pieces.  And we save the pieces."
+
+It was true. There was a terrace west of the house, with a balustrade
+made of the taffrail of a wrecked brigantine. The gateway to the
+garden was the door of an old wheel-house. There was a pergola
+constructed from the timbers of a four-masted schooner that had
+broken up on the third ledge. The bow of the sloop _Christabel,_
+with the name still painted on it, was just outside the garden-gate.
+Everywhere you saw old anchor-bits, and rudder-posts, and knees,
+all silver-greyed by the weather, and fitted in to the _decor_
+of the place.
+
+The prettiest thing of all was a crow's-nest from a wrecked
+brigantine, perched on the highest point of the hill, and looking
+out over the marvellous panorama of sea and shore, island and
+mountain.  Here we sat, after a hearty luncheon with Alice and her
+three boys and half-a-dozen others who were with them in a kind
+of summer camp-school; and while we smoked our pipes, Will Hermann
+told this story.
+
+"You see, Alice and I have a mania for things that have been
+salvaged. We don't like the idea of the wrecks, of course. But they
+would happen any way, whether we were here or not. And since that
+is so, we like to live here on the point and help save what we
+can. Sometimes we get a chance to do something for the crews of
+the little ships that come ashore--hot supper and dry clothes and
+so forth. But the most interesting salvage case that we ever had
+on the point was one in which there was really no wreck at all.
+
+"It was a bright September afternoon ten years ago--one of those
+silver-blue days when there is a little quivering haze in the air
+everywhere, but no fog. We were sitting up here and looking out to
+sea. Just beyond the end of Dunker Rock a large motor-boat came in
+sight through the haze. She was about sixty feet long, with a low
+cabin forward,  a cockpit aft, and a raised place for the steersman
+amidship--a good-looking craft, and evidently very speedy. She
+carried no flag or pennant.  She came driving on, full tilt, straight
+toward us.  We supposed of course she would turn east through the
+narrow channel to Winterport, or sheer off to the west into the
+Southern Way and go up the bay. But not a point did she swerve.
+Steady on she came, toward the three big ledges that lie out there
+beyond that bit of shingly beach at the end of the point.
+
+"'I can't see any helmsman,' said Alice, 'those people must be
+asleep or crazy. Give them a hail through the megaphone. Perhaps
+you can make them hear.'
+
+"So I yelled at the top of my lungs, and Alice waved her jersey.
+We might as well have hailed a comet. That boat ran straight for
+the ledges as if she meant to hurdle them. She came near doing it,
+too. Over the first she scraped, as if her heel had hit it. Over
+the second she shivered, hanging there for a second till a wave
+lifted her. On the third she bumped hard and checked her way for
+a moment, but the engine kept going, and finally she got herself
+over somehow and ran head on to the beach.
+
+"Of course we were excited, and everybody hurried down to see what
+this crazy performance meant.  There was not a creature on the
+boat, alive or dead.
+
+"Everything was shipshape. The little craft had evidently been
+used for fishing. There were rough men's clothes on board, rubber
+boots and oilskins, fresh water and provisions, blankets in
+the cabin, fishing-lines and bait in the cockpit, gasolene in the
+tanks--a nice little outfit, all complete, and no one to run it.
+
+"Where had she come from? There were no names on bow or stern, no
+papers in the cabin. Who had started her on this crazy voyage? How
+did she get away from them? Had they perhaps abandoned  her and
+cast her adrift for some mysterious reason? Undoubtedly there were
+men--apparently three--on board when she set out. What had happened
+to them? A drunken quarrel? Or possibly one of the men had fallen
+overboard; the others had jumped in to save him; the engine had
+started up and the boat left them all in the lurch. Perhaps one
+or all of them may have had some reason for wanting to 'disappear
+without a trace,' so they hit upon the plan of going ashore at
+some lonely place and turning the boat loose to wreck herself. That
+would have been a stupid scheme of course, but not too stupid to
+be human.
+
+"It was just a little piece of sea mystery to which we had no clew.
+So we debated it for an hour, and then set about the more important
+work of salvaging the stranded derelict. Fortunately she went
+ashore near the last of the ebb, and now lay comfortably in the
+mud, apparently little damaged except for some long scratches on
+her side, and a broken blade in her propeller. We dug away the mud
+at bow and stern, made fast a tow-line, and when the tide came in
+my small cruiser pulled her off easily. In the morning the mysterious
+stranger lay at anchor in  the cove round the corner, as quiet as
+a China duck.
+
+"Of course we advertised in the coast newspapers, giving a description
+of the boat--'came ashore,' etc.
+
+"Three days later a boy about thirteen years old turned up at
+Winterport. He came from a village at the northeast corner of the
+bay forty miles away.  He guessed the boat was his father's, but
+couldn't say for sure until he had seen it. So he came down to
+the point and identified it beyond a doubt. He told his story very
+simply.
+
+"The boat belonged to his father, who was a widow-man with only one
+child. He used the boat for fishing, and sometimes he took Johnny
+with him, sometimes not. On the trips without the boy he used to
+stay out longer, sometimes a week or ten days. About a week ago
+he had started out on one of these trips with two other men. They
+had a dory in tow. They hadn't come back. Johnny had seen the piece
+in the paper. Here was the boat, for sure, but no dory. As for the
+rest of the story--well, that was all that Johnny had to tell us
+about it--the mystery was as far away as ever.
+
+"He was a fine, sturdy little chap, with tanned face and clear
+blue eyes. He was rather shaken by his experience, of course, but
+he wouldn't cry--not for the world. We were glad to take him in
+for the night, while we verified his story by telegraph.  It seemed
+the boat was practically his only inheritance,  and the first question
+he asked, after we had gone over it, was how much we wanted him to
+pay for salvage.
+
+"'Just one cent,' said Alice, taking the words out of my mouth, 'and
+what is more, we are going to have her repaired for you. She isn't
+much hurt.' So the boy stammered out the best kind of a 'thank you'
+that he could manage, and the look in his eyes made up for the lack
+of words. That was the time that he came nearest to crying. But
+Alice saved him by asking what he was going to do with the boat.
+
+"He had an idea that he could run her himself, perhaps with another
+man to help him, for fishing in the fall, and for pleasure parties
+in the summer.  He didn't want to cut loose from home altogether
+and sell the boat. Perhaps Dad might come back, some day, or send
+a letter. Anyway Johnny wanted to stay by a seafaring life.
+
+"So we arranged the repairs and all that, and got a man to help
+on the homeward trip, and after a few days Johnny sailed off with
+his patrimony.  That is what Alice and I consider our neatest job
+of salvage."
+
+"Did it work all right?" I asked.
+
+"Finely," said Will Hermann, "like a charm."
+
+"And where is the lad now?"
+
+"Bo'sun's mate on a certain destroyer somewhere off the coast of
+France, fighting in the U. S. Navee."
+
+"And the father?" I inquired, being one of those old-fashioned
+persons who like all the loose ends of a story to be tied up. "Was
+anything ever heard of him?"
+
+"That," answered my friend, carefully shaking out the ashes of
+his pipe beyond the crow's-nest rail, "that belongs in a different
+compartment of the ship."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BOY OF NAZARETH DREAMS
+
+
+There was a Boy in Nazareth long ago whose after-life was wonderful,
+and whose story is written in the heart of mankind. His birth was
+predicted in dreams foretelling marvellous things of him, and in
+later years there were many true visions wherein he played a wondrous
+part.
+
+Did he not also dream, in the days of his youth, while he was growing
+in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man? It would be
+strange indeed if his boyhood was not often visited and illumined
+by those swift flashes of insight and clear unveilings of hidden
+things, which we call dreams but which are in truth rays from "the
+fountain light of all our day."
+
+The first journey that he made, his earliest visit to a great city,
+the three days and nights when he was lost there--surely these
+were times when visions must have come to him, full of mystery and
+wonder, yet clothed in the simple, real forms of this world, which
+he was learning to know. So I let my revery follow him on that
+unrecorded path, remembering where it led him, and imagining, in
+the form of dreams, what may have met him on his way.
+
+
+
+
+
+I. THE JOURNEY TO THE CITY
+
+
+There was not a lad in the country town of Nazareth, nestled high
+on the bosom of the Galilean hills, who did not often look eagerly
+southward over the plain toward the dark mountains of Samaria, and
+think of the great city which lay beyond  them, and long for the
+time when he would be old enough to go with his family on pilgrimage
+to Jerusalem.
+
+That journey would carry him out of childhood.  It would mark the
+beginning of his life as a "son of the commandment," a member of
+the Hebrew nation. Moreover it would be an adventure--a very great
+and joyous adventure, which youth loves.
+
+Palestine, in the days when Augustus Caesar was Lord of the World,
+was an exciting country to travel in. It was full of rovers and
+soldiers of fortune from many lands. It was troubled by mobs and
+tumults and rebellions, infested with landlopers and brigands.
+Jerusalem itself was not only a great city, it was a boisterous and
+boiling city, crowded with visitors from all parts of the world,
+merchants and travellers, princes and beggars, citizens of Rome
+and children of the Desert. There were strange sights to be seen
+there, and all kinds of things were sold in the markets. So while
+the heart of young Nazareth longed for it, the heart of older
+Nazareth was not without anxieties and apprehensions  in regard to
+the first pilgrimage.
+
+This was doubly true in the home of the Boy of whom I speak. He was
+the first-born, the darling  of his parents, a lad beloved by all
+who knew him. His mother hung on him with mystical joy and hope.
+He was the apple of her eye. Deep in her soul she kept the memory
+of angelic words which had come to her while she carried him under
+her heart--words which made her believe that her son would be
+the morning-star of Israel and a light unto the Gentiles. So she
+cherished the Boy and watched over him with tender, unfailing care,
+as her most precious possession, her living, breathing,  growing
+treasure.
+
+When he reached the age of twelve, he was old enough to go up to
+the Temple and take part in the national feast of the Passover. So
+she clad him in the garments of youth and made him ready for the
+four days' pilgrimage.
+
+It was a camping-trip, a wonder-walk, full of variety, with a spice
+of danger and a feast  of delight.
+
+The Boy was the joy of the journey. His keen interest in all things
+seen and heard was like a  refreshing spring of water to the older
+pilgrims. They had so often travelled the same road that they had
+forgotten that it might be new every morning. His unwearying vigor
+and gladness as he ran down the hillsides, or scrambled among the
+rocks far above the path, or roamed through the fields filling his
+hands with flowers, was like a merry song that cheered the long
+miles of the way. He was glad to be alive, and it made the others
+glad to look at him.
+
+There were sixty or seventy kinsfolk and neighbors, plain rustic
+men and women, in the little  company that set out from Nazareth.
+The men carried arms to protect the caravan from robbers or
+marauders. As they wound slowly down the steep, stony road to the
+plain of Esdraelon the Boy ran ahead, making short cuts, turning
+aside to find a partridge's nest among the bushes, jumping from
+rock to rock like a young gazelle, or poising on the edge of some
+cliff in sheer delight of his own  sure-footedness.
+
+His body was outlined against the sky; his blue eyes (like those
+of his mother, who was a maid of Bethlehem) sparkled with the joy
+of living; his long hair was lifted and tossed by the wind of April.
+But his mother's look followed him anxiously, and her heart often
+leaped in her throat.
+
+"My son," she said, as they took their noon-meal in the valley at
+the foot of dark Mount Gilboa,  "you must be more careful. Your
+feet might slip."
+
+"Mother," answered the Boy, "I am truly very careful. I always
+put my feet in the places that God has made for them--on the big,
+strong rocks that will not roll. It is only because I am so happy
+that you think I am careless."
+
+The tents were pitched, the first night, under the walls of Bethshan,
+a fortified city of the Romans.  Set on a knoll above the river
+Jordan, the town loomed big and threatening over the little camp
+of the Galilean pilgrims. But they kept aloof from it, because it
+was a city of the heathen. Its theatres and temples and palaces
+were accursed. The tents were indifferent to the city, and when
+the night opened its star-fields above them and the heavenly lights
+rose over the mountains of Moab and Samaria,  the Boy's clear voice
+joined in the slumber-song of the pilgrims:
+
+
+  "I will lift up mine eyes to the hilis,
+  From whence cometh my help;
+  My help cometh from the Lord,
+  Who made heaven and earth.
+  He will not suffer thy foot to stumble,
+  He who keepeth thee will not slumber.
+  Behold, He who guardeth Israel
+  Will neither slumber nor sleep."
+
+
+Then they drew their woollen cloaks over their heads and rested on
+the ground in peace.
+
+For two days their way led through the wide valley of the Jordan,
+along the level land that stretched from the mountains on either
+side to the rough gulch where the river was raging through its
+jungle. They passed through broad fields of ripe barley and ripening
+wheat, where the quail scuttled and piped among the thick-growing
+stalks. There were fruit-orchards and olive-groves on the foothills,
+and clear streams ran murmuring down through glistening oleander
+thickets. Wild flowers sprang in every untilled corner; tall spikes
+of hollyhocks, scarlet and blue anemones, clusters of mignonette,
+rock-roses, and cyclamens, purple iris in the moist places, and
+many-colored spathes of gladiolus growing  plentifully among the
+wheat.
+
+The larks sang themselves into the sky in the early morn. Hotter
+grew the sun and heavier the air in that long trough below the
+level of the sea.  The song of birds melted away. Only the hawks
+wheeled on motionless wings above silent fields, watching for the
+young quail or the little rabbits, hidden among the grain.
+
+The pilgrims plodded on in the heat. Companies of soldiers with
+glittering arms, merchants with laden mules jingling their bells,
+groups of ragged thieves and bold beggars met and jostled the
+peaceful  travellers on the road. Once a little band of robbers,
+riding across the valley to the land of Moab, turned from a distance
+toward the Nazarenes, circled swiftly around them like hawks,
+whistling and calling  shrilly to one another. But there was small
+booty in that country caravan, and the men who guarded it looked
+strong and tough; so the robbers whirled away as swiftly as they
+had come.
+
+The Boy had stood close to his father in this moment of danger,
+looking on with surprise at the actions of the horsemen.
+
+"What did those riders want?" he asked.
+
+"All we have," answered the man.
+
+"But it is very little," said the Boy. "Nothing but our clothes
+and some food for our journey. If they were hungry, why did they
+not ask of us?"
+
+The man laughed. "These are not the kind that ask," he said, "they
+are the kind that take--what they will and when they can."
+
+"I do not like them," said the Boy. "Their horses were beautiful,
+but their faces were hateful--like a jackal that I saw--in the
+gulley behind Nazareth one night. His eyes were burning red as
+fire. Those men had fires inside of them."
+
+For the rest of that afternoon he walked more quietly and with
+thoughtful looks, as if he were pondering the case of men who looked
+like jackals and had flames within them.
+
+At sunset, when the camp was made outside the gates of the new
+city of Archelaus, on a hillock among the corn-fields, he came to
+his mother with his hands full of the long lavender and rose and
+pale-blue spathes of the gladiolus-lilies.
+
+"Look, mother," he cried, "are they not fine--like the clothes of
+a king?"
+
+"What do you know of kings?" she answered, smiling. "These are
+only wild lilies of the field.  But a great king, like Solomon,
+has robes of thick silk, and jewels on his neck and his fingers,
+and a big crown of gold on his head."
+
+"But that must be very heavy," said the Boy, tossing his head
+lightly. "It must tire him to wear a crown-thing and such thick
+robes. Besides, I think the lilies are really prettier. They look
+just as if they were glad to grow in the field."
+
+The third night they camped among the palm-groves and heavy-odored
+gardens of Jericho, where Herod's splendid palace rose above the
+trees. The fourth day they climbed the wild, steep, robber-haunted
+road from the Jordan valley to the highlands  of Judea, and so came
+at sundown to their camp-ground among friends and neighbors on the
+closely tented slope of the Mount of Olives, over against Jerusalem.
+
+What an evening that was for the Boy! His first sight of the holy
+city, the city of the great king, the city lifted up and exalted
+on the sides of the north, beautiful for situation, the joy of the
+whole earth! He had dreamed of her glory as he listened at his
+mother's knee to the wonder-tales of David and Solomon and the
+brave adventures of the fighting  Maccabees. He had prayed for the
+peace of Jerusalem every night as he kneeled by his bed and lifted
+his hands toward the holy place. He had tried a thousand times to
+picture her strength and her splendor, her marvels and mysteries,
+her multitude of houses and her vast bulwarks, as he strayed among
+the humble cottages of Nazareth or sat in the low doorway of his
+own home.
+
+Now his dream had come true. He looked into the face of Jerusalem,
+just across the deep, narrow valley of the Kidron, where the shadows
+of the evening  were rising among the tombs. The huge battlemented
+walls, encircling the double mounts of Zion and Moriah--the vast
+huddle of white houses, covering hill and hollow with their flat
+roofs and standing so close together that the streets were hidden
+among them--the towers, the colonnades, the terraces--the dark bulk
+of the Roman castle--the marble pillars and glittering roof of the
+Temple in its broad court on the hilltop--it was a city of stone
+and ivory and gold, rising clear against the soft saffron and rose
+and violet of the sunset sky.
+
+The Boy sat with his mother on the hillside while the light waned,
+and the lamps began to twinkle in the city, the stars to glow in
+the deepening blue.  He questioned her eagerly--what is that black
+tower?--why does the big roof shine so bright?--where was King
+David's house?--where are we going to-morrow?
+
+"To-morrow," she answered, "you will see. But now it is the
+sleep-time. Let us sing the psalm that we used to sing at night in
+Nazareth--but very softly, not to disturb the others--for you know
+this psalm is not one of the songs of the pilgrimage."
+
+So the mother and her Child sang together with low voices:
+
+
+   "In peace will I both lay me down and sleep,
+    For thou, Lord, makest me dwell in safety."
+
+
+The tune and the words quieted the Boy. It was like a bit of home
+in a far land.
+
+
+
+
+II. THE GILDED TEMPLE
+
+
+The next day was full of wonder and excitement.  It was the first
+day of the Feast, and the myriad of pilgrims crowded through the
+gates and streets of the city, all straining toward the enclosure
+of the Temple, within whose walls two hundred thousand people could
+be gathered. On every side the Boy saw new and strange things:
+soldiers in their armor, and shops full of costly wares; richly
+dressed Sadducees with their servants following; Jews from far-away
+countries, and curious visitors from all parts of the world; ragged
+children of the city, and painted women of the street, and beggars
+and outcasts of the lower quarters, and rich ladies with their
+retinues, and priests in their snowy robes.
+
+The family from Nazareth passed slowly through the confusion, and
+the Boy, bewildered by the changing scene, longed to get to the
+Temple. He thought everything must be quiet and holy there.  But
+when they came into the immense outer court, with its porticos
+and alcoves, he found the confusion worse than ever. For there the
+money-changers and the buyers and sellers of animals for sacrifice
+were bargaining and haggling; and the thousands of people were
+jostling and pushing one another; and the followers of the Pharisees
+and the Sadducees were disputing; and on many faces he saw that
+strange look which speaks of a fire in the heart, so that it seemed
+like a meeting-place of robbers.
+
+His father had bought a lamb for the Passover sacrifice, at one of
+the stalls in the outer court, and was carrying it on his shoulder.
+He pressed on through the crowd at the Beautiful Gate, the Boy and
+his mother following until they came to the Court of the Women.
+Here the mother stayed, for that was the law--a woman must not go
+farther.  But the Boy was now "a son of the Commandment," and he
+followed his father through the Court of Israel to the entrance
+of the Court of the Priests.  There the little lamb was given to a
+priest, who carried it away to the great stone altar in the middle
+of the court.
+
+The Boy could not see what happened then, for the place was crowded
+and busy. But he heard the blowing of trumpets, and the clashing
+of cymbals, and the chanting of psalms. Black clouds of smoke went
+up from the hidden altar; the floor around was splashed and streaked
+with red. After a long while, as it seemed, the priest brought back
+the dead body of the lamb, prepared for the Passover supper.
+
+"Is this our little lamb?" asked the Boy as his father took it
+again upon his shoulder.
+
+The father nodded.
+
+"It was a very pretty one," said the Boy. "Did it have to die?"
+
+The father looked down at him curiously.  "Surely," he said,
+"it had to be offered on the altar, so that we can keep our feast
+according to the law of Moses to-night."
+
+"But why," persisted the Boy, "must all the lambs be killed in the
+Temple? Does God like that? How many do you suppose were brought
+to the altar to-day?"
+
+"Tens of thousands," answered the father.
+
+"It is a great many," said the Boy, sighing. "I wish one was enough."
+
+He was silent and thoughtful as they made their way through the
+Court of the Women and found the mother and went back to the camp
+on the hillside.  That night the family ate their Paschal feast,
+with their loins girded as if they were going on a journey, in
+memory of the long-ago flight of the Israelites from Egypt. There
+was the roasted lamb, with bitter herbs, and flat cakes of bread
+made without yeast. A cup of wine was passed around the table four
+times. The Boy asked his father the meaning of all these things,
+and the father repeated the story of the saving of the first-born
+sons of Israel in that far-off night of terror and death when they
+came out of Egypt. While the supper was going on, hymns were sung,
+and when it was ended they all chanted together:
+
+
+   "Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;
+    For His loving-kindness endureth for ever."
+
+
+So the Boy lay down under his striped woollen cloak of blue and
+white and drifted toward sleep, glad that he was a son of Israel,
+but sorry when he thought of the thousands of little lambs and the
+altar floor splashed with red. He wondered if some day God would
+not give them another way to keep that feast.
+
+The next day of the festival was a Sabbath, on which no work could
+be done. But the daily sacrifice of the Temple, and all the services
+and songs and benedictions in its courts, continued as usual, and
+there was a greater crowd than ever within its walls. As the Boy
+went thither with his parents they came to a place where a little
+house was beginning to burn, set on fire by an overturned lamp.  The
+poor people stood by, wringing their hands and watching the flames.
+
+"Why do they not try to save their house?" cried the Boy.
+
+The father shook his head. "They can do nothing," he answered. "They
+follow the teaching of the Pharisees, who say that it is unlawful
+to put out a fire on the Sabbath, because it is a labor."
+
+A little later the Boy saw a cripple with a crutch, sitting in the
+door of a cottage, looking very sad and lonely.
+
+"Why does he not go with the others," asked the Boy, "and hear the
+music at the Temple? That would make him happier. Can't he walk?"
+
+"Yes," answered the father, "he can hop along pretty well with his
+crutch on other days, but not on the Sabbath, for he would have to
+carry his crutch, and that would be labor."
+
+All the time he was in the Temple, watching the procession of priests
+and Levites and listening to the music, the Boy was thinking what
+the Sabbath meant, and whether it really rested people and made
+them happier.
+
+The third day of the festival was the offering of the first-fruits
+of the new year's harvest. That was a joyous day. A sheaf of ripe
+barley was reaped and carried into the Temple and presented before
+the high altar with incense and music. The priests blessed the
+people, and the people shouted and sang for gladness.
+
+The Boy's heart bounded in his breast as he joined in the song and
+thought of the bright summer begun, and the birds building their
+nests, and the flowers clothing the hills with beautiful colors,
+and the wide fields of golden grain waving in the wind. He was happy
+all day as he walked through the busy streets with his parents,
+buying some things that were needed for the home in Nazareth; and
+he was happy at night when he lay down under an olive-tree beside
+the tent, for the air was warm and gentle, and he fell asleep under
+the tree, dreaming of what he would see and do to-morrow.
+
+
+
+
+III. HOW THE BOY WAS LOST
+
+
+Now comes the secret of the way he was lost--a way so simple that
+the wonder is that no one has ever dreamed of it before.
+
+The three important days of the Passover were ended, and the time
+had come when those pilgrims who wished to return to their homes
+might leave Jerusalem without offense, though it was more commendable
+to remain through the full seven days.  The people from Nazareth
+were anxious to be gone--they had a long road to travel--their
+harvests were waiting. While the Boy, tired out, was sleeping under
+the tree, the question of going home was talked out and decided.
+They would break camp at sunrise, and, joining with others of their
+countrymen who were tented around them, they would take the road
+for Galilee.
+
+But the Boy awoke earlier than any one else the next morning. Before
+the dawn a linnet in the tree overhead called him with twittering
+songs.  He was rested by his long sleep. His breath came lightly.
+The spirit of youth was beating in his limbs, His heart was eager
+for adventure. He longed for the top of a high hill--for the wide,
+blue sky--for the world at his feet--such a sight as he had often
+found in his rambles among the heights near Nazareth.  Why not? He
+would return in time for the next visit to the Temple.
+
+Quietly he stepped among the sleeping-tents in the dark. A footpath
+led through the shadowy olive-grove, up the hillside, into the
+open. There the light was clearer, and the breeze that runs before
+the daybreak was dancing through the grass.  The Boy turned to
+the left, following along one of the sheep-trails that crossed the
+high, sloping pastures. Then he bore to the right, breasting the
+long ridge, and passed the summit, running lightly to the eastward
+until he came to a rounded, rocky knoll. There he sat down among
+the little bushes to wait for sunrise.
+
+Far beyond the wrinkled wilderness of Tekoa, and the Dead Sea, and
+the mountain-wall of Moab, the rim of the sky was already tinged
+with silvery gray. The fading of the stars travelled slowly upward,
+and the brightening of the rose of dawn followed it, until all the
+east was softly glowing and the deep blue of the central heaven
+was transfused with turquoise light. Dark in the gulfs and chasms
+of the furrowed land the night lingered. Bright along the eastern
+peaks and ridges the coming day, still hidden, revealed itself in
+a fringe of dazzling gold, like the crest of a long mounting wave.
+Shoots and flashes of radiance sprang upward from the glittering
+edge. Streamers of rose-foam and gold-spray floated in the sky.
+Then over the barrier of the hills the sun surged royally-crescent,
+half-disk, full-orb--and overlooked the world. The luminous tide
+flooded the gray villages of Bethany and Bethphage, and all the
+emerald hills around Bethlehem were bathed in light.
+
+The Boy sat entranced, watching the miracle by which God makes His
+sun to shine upon the good and the evil. How strange it was that
+God should do that--bestow an equal light upon those who obeyed Him
+and those who broke His law!  Yet it was splendid, it was King-like
+to give in that way, with both hands. No, it was Father-like--and
+that was what the Boy had learned from his mother--that God who made
+and ruled all things was his Father. It was the name she had taught
+him to use in his prayers. Not in the great prayers he learned
+from the book--the name there was Adonai, the Lord, the Almighty.
+But in the little prayers that he said by himself it was "my Father!"
+It made the Boy feel strangely happy and strong to say that. The
+whole world seemed to breathe and glow around him with an invisible
+presence.  For such a Father, for the sake of His love and favor,
+the Boy felt he could do anything.
+
+More than that, his mother had told him of something special that
+the Father had for him to do in the world. In the evenings during
+the journey and when they were going home together from the Temple,
+she had repeated to him some of the words that the angel-voices
+had spoken to her heart, and some of the sayings of wise men from
+the East who came to visit him when he was a baby. She could not
+understand all the mystery of it; she did not see how it was going
+to be brought to pass. He was a child of poverty and lowliness;
+not rich, nor learned, nor powerful. But with God all things were
+possible. The choosing and calling of the eternal Father were more
+than everything else.  It was fixed in her heart that somehow her
+Boy was sent to do a great work for Israel. He was the son of God
+set apart to save his people and bring back the glory of Zion.
+He was to fulfil the promises made in olden time and bring in the
+wonderful reign of the Messiah in the world--perhaps as a forerunner
+and messenger of the great King, or perhaps himself--ah, she did
+not know! But she believed in her Boy with her whole soul; and she
+was sure that his Father would show him what to do.
+
+These sayings, coming amid the excitements of his first journey,
+his visit to the Temple, his earliest sight of the splendor and
+confusion and misery of the great city, had sunken all the more
+deeply into the Boy's mind. Excitement does not blur the impressions
+of youth; it sharpens them, makes them more vivid. Half-covered
+and hardly noticed at the time, they spring up into life when the
+quiet hour comes.
+
+So the Boy remembered his mother's words while he lay watching the
+sunrise. It would be great to make them come true. To help everybody
+to feel what he felt there on the hilltop--that big, free feeling
+of peace and confidence and not being afraid!  To make those robbers
+in the Jordan valley see how they were breaking the rule of the
+world and burning out their own hearts! To cleanse the Temple from
+the things that filled it with confusion and pain, and drive away
+the brawling buyers and sellers who were spoiling his Father's great
+house! To go among those poor and wretched and sorrowful folks who
+swarmed in Jerusalem and teach them that God was their Father too,
+and that they must not sin and quarrel any more! To find a better
+way than the priests' and the Pharisees' of making people good! To
+do great things for Israel--like Moses, like Joshua, like David--or
+like Daniel, perhaps, who prayed and was not afraid of the
+lions--or like Elijah and Elisha, who went about speaking to the people
+and healing them--
+
+The soft tread of bare feet among the bushes behind him roused the
+Boy. He sprang up and saw a man with a stern face and long hair and
+beard looking at him mysteriously. The man was dressed in white,
+with a leathern girdle round his waist, into which a towel was
+thrust. A leathern wallet hung from his neck, and he leaned upon
+a long staff.
+
+"Peace be with you, Rabbi," said the Boy, reverently bowing at the
+stranger's feet. But the man looked at him steadily and did not
+speak.
+
+The Boy was confused by the silence. The man's eyes troubled him
+with their secret look, but he was not afraid.
+
+"Who are you, sir," he asked, "and what is your will with me? Perhaps
+you are a master of the Pharisees or a scribe? But no--there are
+no broad blue fringes on your garments. Are you a priest, then?"
+
+The man shook his head, frowning. "I despise the priests," he
+answered, "and I abhor their bloody and unclean sacrifices. I am
+Enoch the Essene, a holy one, a perfect keeper of the law. I live
+with those who have never defiled themselves with the eating of
+meat, nor with marriage, nor with wine; but we have all things in
+common, and we are baptized in pure water every day for the purifying
+of our wretched bodies, and after that we eat the daily feast of
+love in the kingdom of the Messiah which is at hand. Thou art called
+into that kingdom, son; come with me, for thou art called."
+
+The Boy listened with astonishment. Some of the things that the man
+said--for instance, about the sacrifices and about the nearness of
+the kingdom--were already in his heart. But other things puzzled
+and bewildered him.
+
+"My mother says that I am called," he answered, "but it is to serve
+Israel and to help the people.  Where do you live, sir, and what
+is it that you do for the people?"
+
+"We live among the hills of that wilderness," he answered, pointing
+to the south, "in the oasis of Engedi. There are palm-trees and
+springs of water, and we keep ourselves pure, bathing before we eat
+and offering our food of bread and dates as a sacrifice to God. We
+all work together, and none of us has anything that he calls his
+own. We do not go up to the Temple nor enter the synagogues. We
+have forsaken the uncleanness of the world and all the impure ways
+of men. Our only care is to keep ourselves from defilement. If we
+touch anything that is forbidden we wash our hands and wipe them
+with this towel that hangs from our girdle.  We alone are serving
+the kingdom. Come, live with us, for I think thou art chosen."
+
+The Boy thought for a while before he answered.  "Some of it is
+good, my master," he said, "but the rest of it is far away from
+my thoughts. Is there nothing for a man to do in the world but to
+think of himself--either in feasting and uncleanness as the heathen
+do, or in fasting and purifying yourself as you do? How can you
+serve the kingdom if you turn away from the people? They do not see
+you or hear you. You are separate from them--just as if you were
+dead without dying. You can do nothing for them. No, I do not want
+to come with you and live at Engedi. I think my Father will show
+me something better to do."
+
+"Your Father!" said Enoch the Essene. "Who is He?"
+
+"Surely," answered the Boy, "He is the same as yours. He that made
+us and made all that we see--the great world for us to live in."
+
+"Dust," said the man, with a darker frown--"dust and ashes! It will
+all perish, and thou with it. Thou art not chosen--not pure!"
+
+With that he went away down the hill; and the Boy, surprised and
+grieved at his rude parting, wondered a little over the meaning
+of his words, and then went back as quickly as he could toward the
+tents.
+
+When he came to the olive-grove they were gone!  The sun was
+already high, and his people had departed hours ago. In the hurry
+and bustle of breaking camp each of the parents had supposed that the
+Boy was with the other, or with some of the friends and neighbors,
+or perhaps running along the hillside above them as he used to do.
+So they went their way cheerfully, not knowing that they had left
+their son behind. This is how it came to pass that he was lost.
+
+
+
+
+IV. HOW THE BOY WENT HIS WAY
+
+
+When the Boy saw what had happened he was surprised and troubled,
+but not frightened. He did not know what to do. He might hasten
+after them, but he could not tell which way to go. He was not even
+sure that they had gone home; for they had talked of paying a visit
+to their relatives in the south before returning to Nazareth; and
+some of the remaining pilgrims to whom he turned for news of his
+people said that they had taken the southern road from the Mount
+of Olives, going toward Bethlehem.
+
+The Boy was at a loss, but he was not disheartened, nor even cast
+down. He felt that somehow all would be well with him; he would be
+taken care of. They would come back for him in good time.  Meanwhile
+there were kind people here who would give him food and shelter.
+There were boys in the other camps with whom he could play. Best
+of all, he could go again to the city and the Temple.  He could see
+more of the wonderful things there, and watch the way the people
+lived, and find out why so many of them seemed sad or angry, and a
+few proud and scornful, and almost all looked unsatisfied. Perhaps
+he could listen to some of the famous rabbis who taught the people
+in the courts of the Temple and learn from them about the things
+which his Father had chosen him to do.
+
+So he went down the hill and toward the Sheep Gate by which he had
+always gone into the city.  Outside the gate a few boys about his
+own age, with a group of younger children, were playing games.
+
+"Look there," they cried--"a stranger! Let us have some fun with
+him. Halloo, Country, where do you come from?"
+
+"From Galilee," answered the Boy.
+
+"Galilee is where all the fools live," cried the children. "Where
+is your home? What is your name?"
+
+He told them pleasantly, but they laughed at his country way of
+speaking and mimicked his pronunciation.
+
+"Yalilean! Yalilean!" they cried. "You can't task. Can you play?
+Come and play with us."
+
+So they played together. First, they had a mimic wedding-procession.
+Then they made believe that the bridegroom was killed by a robber,
+and they had a mock funeral. The Boy took always the lowest part.
+He was the hired mourner who followed the body, wailing; he was the
+flute-player who made music for the wedding-guests to dance to.
+
+So readily did he enter into the play that the children at first were
+pleased with him. But they were not long contented with anything.
+Some of them would dance no more for the wedding; others would
+lament no more for the funeral. Their caprices made them quarrelsome.
+
+"Yalilean fool," they cried, "you play it all wrong. You spoil the
+game. We are tired of it.  Can you run? Can you throw stones?"
+
+So they ran races; and the Boy, trained among the hills, outran
+the others. But they said he did not keep to the course. Then they
+threw stones; and the Boy threw farther and straighter than any of
+the rest. This made them angry.
+
+Whispering together, they suddenly hurled a shower of stones at
+him. One struck his shoulder, another made a long cut on his cheek.
+Wiping away the blood with his sleeve, he turned silently and ran
+to the Sheep Gate, the other boys chasing him with loud shouts.
+
+He darted lightly through the crowd of animals and people that
+thronged the gateway, turning and dodging with a sure foot among
+them and running up the narrow street that led to the sheep-market.
+The cries of his pursuers grew fainter behind him. Among the stalls
+of the market he wound this way and that way like a hare before
+the hounds. At last he had left them out of sight and hearing.
+
+Then he ceased running and wandered blindly on through the northern
+quarter of the city. The sloping streets were lined with bazaars and
+noisy workshops. The Roman soldiers from the castle were sauntering
+to and fro. Women in rich attire, with ear-rings and gold chains,
+passed by with their slaves. Open market-places were still busy,
+though the afternoon trade was slackening.
+
+But the Boy was too tired and faint with hunger and heavy at heart
+to take an interest in these things.  He turned back toward the
+gate, and, missing his way a little, came to a great pool of water,
+walled in wit, white stone, with five porticos around it.  In some
+of these porticos there were a few people lying upon mats. But one
+of the porches was empty, and here the Boy sat down.
+
+He was worn out. His cheek was bleeding again, and the drops
+trickled down his neck. He went down the broad steps to the pool
+to wash away the blood. But he could not do it very well. His head
+ached too much. So he crept back to the porch, unwound his little
+turban, curled himself in a corner on the hard stones, his head
+upon his arm, and fell sound asleep.
+
+He was awakened by a voice calling him, a hand laid upon his
+shoulder. He looked up and saw the face of a young woman, dark-eyed,
+red-lipped, only a few years older than himself. She was clad in
+silk, with a veil of gauze over her head, gold coins in her hair,
+and a phial of alabaster hanging by a gold chain around her neck.
+A sweet perfume like the breath of roses came from it as she moved.
+Her voice was soft and kind.
+
+"Poor boy," she said, "you are wounded; some one has hurt you. What
+are you doing here? You look like a little brother that I had long
+ago. Come with me. I will take care of you."
+
+The Boy rose and tried to go with her. But he was stiff and sore; he
+could hardly walk; his head was swimming. The young woman beckoned
+to a Nubian slave who followed her. He took the Boy in his big
+black arms and so carried him to a pleasant house with a garden.
+
+There were couches and cushions there, in a marble court around
+a fountain. There were servants who brought towels and ointments.
+The young woman bathed the Boy's wound and his feet.  The servants
+came with food, and she made him eat of the best. His eyes grew
+bright again, and the color came into his cheeks. He talked to her
+of his life in Nazareth, of the adventures of his first journey,
+and of the way he came to be lost.
+
+She listened to him intently, as if there were some strange charm
+in his simple talk. Her eyes rested upon him with pleasure. A new
+look swept over her face. She leaned close to him.
+
+"Stay with me, boy," she murmured, "for I want you. Your people are
+gone. You shall sleep here to-night--you shall live with me and I
+will be good to you--I will teach you to love me."
+
+The Boy moved back a little and looked at her with wide eyes, as
+if she were saying something that he could not understand.
+
+"But you have already been good to me, sister," he answered, "and
+I love you already, even as your brother did. Is your husband here?
+Will he come soon, so that we can all say the prayer of thanks-giving
+together for the food?"
+
+Her look changed again; her eyes filled with pain and sorrow; she
+shrank back and turned away her face.
+
+"I have no husband," she said. "Ah, boy, innocent boy, you do
+not understand. I eat the bread of shame and live in the house of
+wickedness. I am a sinner, a sinner of the city. How could I pray?"
+
+With that she fell a-sobbing, rocking herself to and fro, and the
+tears ran through her fingers like rain. The Boy looked at her,
+astonished and pitiful.  He moved nearer to her, after a moment,
+and spoke softly.
+
+"I am very sorry, sister," he said; and as he spoke he felt her
+tears falling on his feet. "I am more sorry than I ever was in my
+life. It must be dreadful to be a sinner. But sinners can pray, for
+God is our Father, and fathers know how to forgive.  I will stay
+with you and teach you some of the things my mother has taught me."
+
+She looked up and caught his hand and kissed it. She wiped away
+her tears, and rose, pushing back her hair.
+
+"No, dear little master," she said, "you shall not stay in this
+house--not an hour. It is not fit for you. My Nubian shall lead you
+back to the gate, and you will return to your friends outside of
+the city, and you will forget one whom you comforted for a moment."
+
+The Boy turned back as he stood in the doorway.  "No," he said. "I
+will not forget you. I will always remember your love and kindness.
+Will you learn to pray, and give up being a sinner?"
+
+"I will try," she answered; "you have made me want to try. Go in
+peace. God knows what will become of me."
+
+"God knows, sister," replied the Boy gravely.  "Abide in peace."
+
+So he went out into the dusk with the Nubian and found the camp on
+the hillside and a shelter in one of the friendly tents, where he
+slept soundly and woke refreshed in the morning.
+
+This day he would not spend in playing and wandering.  He would go
+straight to the Temple, to find some of the learned teachers who
+gave instruction there, and learn from them the wisdom that he
+needed in order to do his work for his Father.
+
+As he went he thought about the things that had befallen him
+yesterday. Why had the man dressed in white despised him? Why had
+the city children mocked him and chased him away with stones?  Why
+was the strange woman who had been so kind to him afterward so
+unhappy and so hopeless?
+
+There must be something in the world that he did not understand,
+something evil and hateful and miserable that he had never felt in
+himself.  But he felt it in the others, and it made him so sorry, so
+distressed for them, that it seemed like a heavy weight, a burden
+on his own heart. It was like the work of those demons, of whom
+his mother had told him, who entered into people and lived inside
+of them, like worms eating away a fruit.
+
+Only these people of whom he was thinking did not seem to have a
+demon that took hold of them and drove them mad and made them foam
+at the mouth and cut themselves with stones, like a man he once
+saw in Galilee. This was something larger and more mysterious-like
+the hot wind that sometimes blew from the south and made people
+gloomy and angry--like the rank weeds that grew in certain fields,
+and if the sheep fed there they dropped and died.
+
+The Boy felt that he hated this unknown, wicked, unhappy thing more
+than anything else in the world.  He would like to save people from
+it. He wanted to fight against it, to drive it away. It seemed as
+if there were a spirit in his heart saying to him, "This is what
+you must do, you must fight against this evil, you must drive out
+the darkness, you must be a light, you must save the people--this
+is your Father's work for you to do."
+
+But how? He did not know. That was what he wanted to find out. And
+he went into the Temple hoping that the teachers there would tell
+him.
+
+He found the vast Court of the Gentiles, as it had been on his first
+visit, swarming with people.  Jews and Syrians and foreigners of
+many nations were streaming into it through the eight open gates,
+meeting and mingling and eddying round in confused currents,
+bargaining and haggling with the merchants and money-changers,
+crowding together around some group where argument had risen to a
+violent dispute, drifting away again in search of some new excitement.
+
+The morning sacrifice was ended, but the sound of music floated
+out from the enclosed courts in front of the altar, where the more
+devout worshippers were gathered. The Roman soldiers of the guard
+paced up and down, or leaned tranquilly upoa their spears, looking
+with indifference or amused contempt upon the turbulent scenes of
+the holy place where they were set to keep the peace and prevent
+the worshippers from attacking one another.
+
+The Boy turned into the long, cool cloisters, their lofty marble
+columns and carved roofs, which ran around the inside of the walls.
+Here he found many groups of people, walking in the broad aisles
+between the pillars, or seated in the alcoves of Solomon's Porch
+around the teachers who were instructing them. From one to another
+of these open schools he wandered, listening eagerly to the different
+rabbis and doctors of the law.
+
+Here one was reading from the Torah and explaining the laws about
+the food which a Jew must not eat, and the things which he must not
+do on the Sabbath. Here another was expounding the doctrine of the
+Pharisees about the purifying of the sacred vessels in the Temple;
+while another, a Sadducee, was disputing with him scornfully and
+claiming that the purification of the priests was the only important
+thing. "You would wash that which needs no washing," he cried,
+"the Golden Candlestick, one day in every week! Next you will want
+to wash the sun for fear an unclean ray of light may fall on the
+altar!"
+
+Other teachers were reciting from the six books of the Talmud which
+the Pharisees were making to expound the law. Others repeated the
+histories of Israel, recounted the brave deeds of the Maccabees,
+or read from the prophecies of Enoch and Daniel. Others still were
+engaged in political debate: the Zealots talking fiercely of the
+misdeeds of the house of Herod and the outrages committed by the
+Romans; the Sadducees contemptuously mocking at the hopes of the
+revolutionists and showing that the dream of freedom for Judea
+was foolish.  "Freedom," they said, "belongs to those who are well
+protected. We have the Temple and priesthood because Rome takes care
+of us." To this the Zealots answered angrily: "Yes, the priesthood
+belongs to you unbelieving Sadducees; that is why you are content
+with it. Look, now, at the place where you let Herod hang an accursed
+eagle of gold on the front of Jehovah's House."
+
+So from group to group the Boy passed, listening intently, but
+hearing little to his purpose. All day long he listened, now to
+one, now to another, completely absorbed by what he heard, yet not
+satisfied.  Late in the afternoon he came into the quietest part
+of Solomon's Porch, where two large companies were seated around
+their respective teachers, separated from each other by a distance
+of four or five columns.
+
+As he stood on the edge of the first company, whose rabbi was a
+lean, dark-bearded, stern little man, the Boy was spoken to by a
+stranger at his side, who asked him what he sought in the Temple.
+
+"Wisdom," answered the Boy. "I am looking for some one to give a
+light to my path."
+
+"That is what I am seeking, too," said the stranger, smiling. "I
+am a Greek, and I desire wisdom. Let us see if we can get it from
+this teacher. Listen."
+
+He made his way to the centre of the circle and stood before the
+stern little man.
+
+"Master," said the Greek, "I am willing to become thy disciple if
+thou wilt teach me the whole law while I stand before thee thus--on
+one foot."
+
+The rabbi looked at him angrily, and, lifting up his stick, smote
+him sharply across the leg. "That is the whole law for mockers,"
+he cried. The stranger limped away amid the laughter of the crowd.
+
+"But the little man was too angry; he did not see that I was in
+earnest," said he, as he came back to the Boy. "Now let us go to
+the next school and see if the master there is any better."
+
+So they went to the second company, which was gathered around a
+very old man, with long, snowy beard and a gentle face. The stranger
+took his place as before, standing on one foot, and made the same
+request. The rabbi's eyes twinkled and his lips were smiling as he
+answered promptly:
+
+"Do nothing to thy neighbor that thou wouldst not have him do to
+thee, this is the whole law; all the rest follows from this."
+
+"Well," said the stranger, returning, "what think you of this
+teacher and his wisdom? Is it better?"
+
+"It is far better," replied the Boy eagerly: "it is the best of
+all I have heard to-day. I am coming back to hear him to-morrow.
+Do you know his name?"
+
+"I think it is Hillel," answered the Greek, "and he is a learned
+man, the master of the Sanhedrim.  You will do well, young Jew, to
+listen to such a man. Socrates could not have answered me better.
+But now the sun is near setting. We must go our ways. Farewell."
+
+In the tent of his friends the Boy found welcome and a supper, but
+no news of his parents. He told his experiences in the Temple, and
+the friends heard him, wondering at his discernment. They were in
+doubt whether to let him go again the next day; but he begged so
+earnestly, arguing that they could tell his parents where he was
+if they should come to the camp seeking him, that finally he won
+consent.
+
+
+
+
+V. HOW THE BOY WAS FOUND
+
+
+He was in Solomon's Porch long before the schools had begun to
+assemble. He paced up and down under the triple colonnade, thinking
+what questions he should ask the master.
+
+The company that gathered around Hillel that day was smaller, but
+there were more scribes and doctors of the law among them, and
+they were speaking of the kingdom of the Messiah--the thing that
+lay nearest to the Boy's heart. He took his place in the midst of
+them, and they made room for him, for they liked young disciples
+and encouraged them to ask after knowledge.
+
+It was the prophecy of Daniel that they were discussing, and the
+question was whether these things were written of the First Messiah
+or of the Second Messiah; for many of the doctors held that there
+must be two, and that the first would die in battle, but the second
+would put down all his enemies and rule over the world.
+
+"Rabbi," asked the Boy, "if the first was really the Messiah, could
+not God raise him up again and send him back to rule?"
+
+"You ask wisely, son," answered Hillel, "and I think the prophets
+tell us that we must hope for only one Messiah. This book of Daniel
+is full of heavenly words, but it is not counted among the prophets
+whose writings are gathered in the Scripture. Which of them have
+you read, and which do you love most, my son?"
+
+"Isaiah," said the Boy, "because he says God will have mercy with
+everlasting-kindness. But I love Daniel, too, because he says they
+that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever
+and ever. But I do not understand what he says about the times
+and a half-time and the days and the seasons before the coming of
+Messiah."
+
+With this there rose a dispute among the doctors about the meaning
+of those sayings, and some explained them one way and some another,
+but Hillel sat silent. At last he said:
+
+"It is better to hope and to wait patiently for Him than to reckon
+the day of His coming. For if the reckoning is wrong, and He does
+not come, then men despair, and no longer make ready for Him."
+
+"How does a man make ready for Him, Rabbi?" asked the Boy.
+
+"By prayer, son, and by study of the law, and by good works, and
+by sacrifices."
+
+"But when He comes He will rule over the whole world, and how can
+all the world come to the Temple to sacrifice?"
+
+"A way will be provided," answered the old man, "though I do not
+know how it will be. And there are offerings of the heart as well
+as of the altar. It is written, 'I will have mercy and not sacrifice.'"
+
+"Will His kingdom be for the poor as well as for the rich, and for
+the ignorant as well as for the wise?"
+
+[Illustration: From a painting by Holman Junt. The Finding of Christ
+in The Temple]
+
+"Yes, it will be for the poor and for the rich alike. But it will
+not be for the ignorant, my son.  For he who does not know the law
+cannot be pious."
+
+"But, Rabbi," said the Boy eagerly, "will He not have mercy on them
+just because they are ignorant? Will He not pity them as a shepherd
+pities his sheep when they are silly and go astray?"
+
+"He is not only a Shepherd," answered Hillel firmly, "but a great
+King. They must all keep the law, even as it is written and as the
+elders have taught it to us. There is no other way."
+
+The Boy was silent for a time, while the others talked of the law,
+and of the Torah, and of the Talmud in which Hillel in those days
+was writing down the traditions of the elders. When there was an
+opportunity he spoke again.
+
+"Rabbi, if most of the people should be both poor and ignorant
+when the Messiah came, so ignorant that they did not even know Him,
+wouldn't He save them just because they were poor?"
+
+Hillel looked at the Boy with love, and hesitated before he answered.
+
+At that moment a man and a woman came through the colonnade with
+hurried steps. The man stopped at the edge of the circle, astonished
+at what he saw. But the woman came into the centre and put her arm
+around the Boy.
+
+"My boy," she cried, "why hast thou done this to us? See how sorrowful
+thou hast made me and thy father, looking everywhere for thee."
+
+"Mother," he answered, "why did you look everywhere for me with
+sorrow? Did you not know that I would be in my Father's house? Must
+I not begin to think of the things my Father wants me to do?"
+
+Thus the lost Boy was found again, and went home with, his parents
+to Nazareth. The old rabbi blessed him as he left the Temple.
+
+But had he really been lost, or was he finding his way?
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Valley of Vision, by Henry Van Dyke
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