t
for them. He loved a girl. And in his absence she had loved someone
else. For a time he was over-thrown.

Yet he had been one of a glorious company. One of that great flock
which had winged its exalted flight to France. Throughout the story
Randy wove the theme of the big white bird in the glass case. His hero
felt himself likewise on the shelf, shut-in, stuffed, dead--his trumpet
silent.

"Am I, too, in a glass case?" he asked himself; "will my trumpet never
sound again?"

The first part of the story ended there. "Jove," Cope said, as he
looked up, "that boy can write----"

Louise had stopped working. "It is rather--tremendous, don't you
think?"

Archibald nodded. "In a quiet way it thrills. He hasn't used a word
too much. But he carries one with him to a sort of--upper sky----"

Becky, flushing and paling with the thought of such praise as this for
Randy, said, "I always thought he could do it."

But even she had not known that Randy could do what he did in the
second part of the story.

For in it Randy answered his own questions. There was no limit to a
man's powers, no limits to his patriotism, if only he believed in
himself. He must strive, of course, to achieve. But striving made him
strong. His task might be simple, but its very simplicity demanded
that he put his best into it. He must not measure himself by the rule
of little men. If other men had made money while he fought, then let
them be weighed down by their bags of gold. He would not for one
moment set against their greed those sacred months of self-sacrifice.

And as for the woman he loved. If his love meant anything it must burn
with a pure flame. What he might have been for her, he would be
because of her. He would not be less a man because he had loved her.

And so the boy came in the end of the story to the knowledge that it
was the brave souls who sounded their trumpets---- One did not strive
for happiness. One strove for--victory. One strove, at least, for one
clear note of courage, amid the clamor of the world.

Louise, listening, forgot her beads. The Admiral blew his nose and
wiped his eyes. Becky felt herself engulfed by a wave of surging
memories.

"That's corking stuff, do you know it?" Archibald was asking.

Louise asked, "How old is he?"

"Twenty-three."

"He is young to have learned all that----"

"All what, Louise?" Archibald asked.

"Renunciation," said Louise, slowly, "that's what it is