."

"I feel that way every time I go out exploring," answered Tuck. "I can
stand the draughting board just so long and then I break loose. I
suppose someone has got to do these jobs and there is always someone
willing to take the responsibility. Kipling calls it being a Son of
Martha. Do you know those verses?"

"No," said Jim. "I'd like to hear them."

Charlie chuckled. "Me reciting Kipling is like hearing a 'co-ed
yell'--it's the only poem I know, though, and here goes. The Sons of
Martha

'--say to the Mountains, Be ye removed! They say to the lesser floods,
run dry!
Under their rods are the rocks reproved. They are not afraid of that
which is high.
Then do the hilltops shake to their summits, then is the bed of the deep
laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the
nuts break loose,
They do not teach that His pity allows them to leave their work whenever
they choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert
they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long
in the land.

Lift ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat,
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that.
Not as a ladder from Earth to Heaven, not as an altar to any creed,
But simple Service, simply given, to their own kind, in their
common need.'"

The two men sat in silence after Charlie had finished until he said: "If
I were you I'd read Kipling a good deal. He's good food for a man of
your type. People don't realize what their comforts cost. I hope that
when I die it will be on a Son of Martha job. I'm built that way. My
people were New Englanders, then middle west pioneers, and now here I
am, still breaking the wilderness."

Jim sat with his heart swelling with he knew not what great dream. It
was the divine fire of young sacrifice, the subtle sense of devotion
that has made men since the world began lay down their lives for the
thing not seen with the eye.

"I wish you'd teach me those verses," said Jim. "We've got to keep awake
or roll off the ledge."

And so the night passed.

The next day the way was unspeakably difficult. They made progress
slowly and heavily, clambering from rock to rock, clinging to the walls,
fighting through