d lips are slow to answer, he cries out,
"John's dead--John Barclay's drowned--drowned--gave his life trying
to save Trixie Lee out there on a tree caught in the dam."

The news is so sudden, so stunning, that the old men sit there for a
moment, staring wide-eyed at the general. McHurdie is the first to
find his voice.

"How did it happen?" he says.

"I don't know--no one seems to know exactly," replies the general.
And then in broken phrases he gives them the confused report that he
has gathered: how some one had found Trixie Lee clinging to a tree
caught in the current of the swollen river just above the dam, and
calling for help, frantic with fear; how a crowd gathered, as crowds
gather, and the outcry brought John Barclay running from his house
near by; how he arrived to find men discussing ways of reaching the
woman in the swift current, while her grip was loosening and her cries
were becoming fainter. Then the old spirit in John Barclay, that had
saved the county-seat for Sycamore Ridge, came out for the last time.
His skiff was tied to a tree on the bank close at hand. A boy was sent
running to the nearest house for a clothes-line. When he returned,
John was in the skiff, with the oars in hand. He passed an end of the
line to the men, and without a word in answer to their protests, began
to pull out against the current. It was too strong for him, and was
sweeping him past the woman, when he stood up, measured the distance
with his eye, and threw the line so it fell squarely across her
shoulders. Some one said that as the skiff shot over the dam, John,
still standing up, had a smile on his face, and that he waved his hand
to the crowd with a touch of his old bravado.

The general paused before going on with the story.

"They sent me to tell his mother--the woman who had borne him,
suckled him, reared him, lost him, and found him again."

"And what did she say?" asked Watts, as the general hesitated.

The general moistened his lips and went on. "She stood staring at me
for one dreadful minute, and then she asked, 'How did he die,
Philemon?' 'He died saving a woman from drowning,' I told her. 'Did he
save her?'--that was what she asked, still standing stiff and
motionless. 'Yes,' I said. 'She was only Trixie Lee--a bad woman--a
bad woman, Mrs. Barclay.' And Mary Barclay lifted her long, gaunt arms
halfway above her head and cried: 'Mine eyes have seen the glory of
the coming of the Lord. I must have an hour