ope in all this?" asked Natalie, with a little,
indicative gesture toward the scene before them. "Somehow, it is
impressing me tremendously to-night--more than ever before. I seem to
understand better what it means, what it stands for."

"It's a stale enough story with me," said Barclay. "Remember, I've been
doing just about nothing but watch this kind of thing for the past two
weeks. After all, what does it amount to but a thousand possibilities
parading like peacocks?"

"How unlike you, that speech! It amounts to a vast deal more than that,
Johnny boy,--oh, infinitely more! I don't speak of the other regiments
you have seen. This is different. Well, what _does_ it amount to? Who
and what are these thousand peacocks of yours? Aren't they the very
flower of Kenton City, the youngest and best blood in our veins,
gathered by one good man's will into an organization of sterling
loyalty, with one great aim in view, and that the support and protection
and preservation of all that is best in Alleghenia? The very fact that
such a body of men exists among us is in the nature of a guarantee, it
seems to me, that we shall come out all right in the end. Have you
noticed their faces?--many of them so absurdly boyish, all of them so
honest, and manly, and--and--_American_, John! They are the
personifications of your ideal of that afternoon in the
library--Americans, and something more--Alleghenians! And, to prove it,
they are freely giving a portion of their time and their strength, in
order that there may be at least one thing in Kenton City which is
without fear and without reproach. I wonder--I wonder, John, whether it
isn't the old story, after all: whether you haven't been wandering all
over the world, like the prince in the fairy-book, looking for the magic
talisman that is to save the state you love, while, all the time, it has
been lying at your very door? Oh, this means something--I'm too stupid
to interpret it as you could--but I know it's there, and that it would
help you and encourage you. Let me try. Look there! A single purpose
animates them all--the maintenance of the standard which Colonel
Broadcastle set for them, and the record they have made for themselves."

Colonel Broadcastle's voice was sweeping the armory, as he put the
regiment through the manual of arms.

"One has only to hear one of them--Mr. Nisbet, for example--say 'the
Ninth' to find the hope of which you are in search. These men say it as
others sa