gotten for seventy years. So he did it--that way. And
if your explanation is the right one it isn't so much less wonderful, is
it?" he demanded. "In these days psychology dares say more than in 1917.
One knows that ghost stories, as they called them in those ignorant
times, are not all superstition and imagination. One knows that a soul
lives beyond the present, that a soul sometimes struggles back from what
we call the hereafter to this little earth--makes the difficult
connection between an unseen world of spirit, unconditioned by matter,
and our present world of spirit, conditioned by matter. When the pull is
strong enough. And what pull could be stronger than England's danger? To
Kitchener?" The black-lashed, gray eyes flamed at me, unblinking the
rift of light through the curtain of eternal silences.
When I spoke again: "It's a story the world ought to own some day," I
said. "Love of country, faithfulness that death could not hinder."
"Well," said old General Cochrane, "when I'm gone you may write it for
the world if you like, little American. And what I'll do will be to find
the Sirdar, the very first instant I'm over the border, and say to him,
'I've known it was your work all along, sir, and however did you get it
across?'"
A month ago my cousin sent me some marked newspapers. General Cochrane
has gone over the border, and I make no doubt that before now he has
found the Sirdar and that the two sons and saviors of a beloved little
land on a little planet have talked over that moment, in the leisures
and simplicities of eternity, and have wondered perhaps that anyone
could wonder how he got it across.
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