and the last gates would burst wide open. Eagerly the
American soldiers waited the command to finish the task. But it was not
given. The leaders of the other armies had counseled together and
prevailed against further advance, whether moved by military prudence or
governed by jealousy of the ability of General Chaffee and the magnificent
record of the American soldiers in the Orient, the privates could not
know.

Just as the command to retire was sounded Japanese coolies had run with
scaling ladders to the last wall. It was the supreme moment for Thaine
Aydelot. He was only a private, but in that instant all the old dominant
Cavalier blood of the Thaines, all the old fearless independence of the
Huguenot Aydelots, all the calm poise and courage of the Quaker
Penningtons throbbed again in his every pulse-beat. He threw aside his
soldier obligation and stood up a man, guided alone by the light within
him.

"It is a far cry from the green Kansas prairies to the heart of old
China," he declared to himself. "Yet I'll go to the heart of that heart
now, and I'll show it the Stars and Stripes of a free people, so help me
God!"

He turned and sped to the last wall, snatching the flag from a
color-bearer as he ran. At the foot of the ladder the men holding it
wavered a little. Thaine threw the flag up to a coolie who was already
climbing.

"Take it up. If I don't get up, wave it there if you die for it," he cried
as he sprang up the ladder behind the color-bearer.

The shots were thick about them as up and up they went until at last
Thaine stood beside the indomitable little Japanese who had carried the
American flag up the ladder.

Below the Kansas boy lay the holy city of an ancient civilization in all
its breadth of ingenuity and narrowness of spirit. Standing there, a
target for every gun, waving the Star-Spangled Banner out over that old
stronghold, he cried:

"This is the end of the wilderness! Look up and see the token of light and
hope and love. Other hands than mine will bear them to you, but I have
shown you their symbol. I, Thaine Aydelot, of Kansas, first of all the
world, have dared to stand on your most sacred walls with Old Glory in my
hand. Wherever its shadow falls there is life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. In God's good time they will all come to you in peace as they
have come to you now in warfare. Mine today has been the soldier service,
and mine today the great reward."

CHAPTER XX