eaders of splendid forlorn hopes flamed in
her little person--flamed grandly, and invincible. While knowing herself
insignificant and weak, she knew at the same time that power at her back
which moves the worlds. The faith that filled her was the weapon in her
hands, and the right by which she claimed it; but the spirit of utter,
selfless sacrifice that characterized her life was the means by which
she mastered its immediate use. For a kind of white and faultless
intuition guided her to the attack. Behind her stood her Bible and her
God.

How so magnificent a divination came to her at all may well be a matter
for astonishment, though some clue of explanation lies, perhaps, in the
very simpleness of her nature. At any rate, she saw quite clearly
certain things; saw them in moments only--after prayer, in the still
silence of the night, or when left alone those long hours in the house
with her knitting and her thoughts--and the guidance which then flashed
into her remained, even after the manner of its coming was forgotten.

They came to her, these things she saw, formless, wordless; she could
not put them into any kind of language; but by the very fact of being
uncaught in sentences they retained their original clear vigor.

Hours of patient waiting brought the first, and the others followed
easily afterwards, by degrees, on subsequent days, a little and a
little. Her husband had been gone since early morning, and had taken his
luncheon with him. She was sitting by the tea things, the cups and
teapot warmed, the muffins in the fender keeping hot, all ready for his
return, when she realized quite abruptly that this thing which took him
off, which kept him out so many hours day after day, this thing that was
against her own little will and instincts--was enormous as the sea. It
was no mere prettiness of single Trees, but something massed and
mountainous. About her rose the wall of its huge opposition to the sky,
its scale gigantic, its power utterly prodigious. What she knew of it
hitherto as green and delicate forms waving and rustling in the winds
was but, as it were the spray of foam that broke into sight upon the
nearer edge of viewless depths far, far away. The trees, indeed, were
sentinels set visibly about the limits of a camp that itself remained
invisible. The awful hum and murmur of the main body in the distance
passed into that still room about her with the firelight and hissing
kettle. Out yonder--in the Fores