men whom this vast concourse had gathered together to honour. It was
noted by the curious in such things that he made no allusion to the two
officers, to Commander Dupre and Lieutenant Paritot; doubtless he
thought that they, after all, had been amply honoured in the preceding
speeches.

But though his care for the lowly heroes proved the Mayor of Falaise a
good republican, he showed himself in the popular estimation also a
scholar, for he wound up with the old tag--the grand old tag which
inspired so many noble souls in the proudest of ancient empires and
civilizations, and which will retain the power of moving and thrilling
generations yet unborn in both the Western and the Eastern worlds:

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

THE CHILD

I

It was close on eleven o'clock; the July night was airless, and the last
of that season's great balls was taking place in Grosvenor Square.

Mrs. Elwyn's brougham came to a sudden halt in Green Street. Encompassed
behind and before with close, intricate traffic, the carriage swung
stiffly on its old-fashioned springs, responding to every movement of
the fretted horse.

Hugh Elwyn, sitting by his mother's side, wondered a little impatiently
why she remained so faithful to the old brougham which he could
remember, or so it seemed to him, all his life. But he did not utter his
thoughts aloud; he still went in awe of his mother, and he was proud, in
a whimsical way, of her old-fashioned austerity of life, of her
narrowness of vision, of her dislike of modern ways and new fashions.

Mrs. Elwyn after her husband's death had given up the world. This was
the first time since her widowhood that she and her son had dined out
together; but then the occasion was a very special one--they had been to
dinner with the family of Elwyn's fiancee, Winifred Fanshawe.

Hugh Elwyn turned and looked at his mother. As he saw in the
half-darkness the outlines of the delicately pure profile, framed in
grey bands of hair covering the ears as it had been worn when Mrs. Elwyn
was a girl upwards of forty years ago, he felt stirred with an unwonted
tenderness, added to the respect with which he habitually regarded her.

Since leaving Cavendish Square they had scarcely spoken the one to the
other. The drive home was a short one, for they lived in South Street.
It was tiresome that they should be held up in this way within a hundred
yards of their own door.

Suddenly the mother spoke.