of such stern stuff that not even a tear rolled down his cheeks to
quench the flames that leaped around him ever higher and higher. And
the dawn came up in the eastern sky; and I knew that a great day was
preparing for mankind; and with my eyes fixed upon him as he turned
blacker and blacker I let my heart loose in a great thanksgiving that
I had lived to see this moment. It was then that he cried out in a loud
voice:

"'I call Aurora to witness that I have died without a falter, grasping a
burning spear, to tilt at the malpractice which has sent me mad!' And
I saw that he held in his fast-consuming hand a long roll of journals
sharpened to a point of burning flame.

"'Aurora!' he cried again, and with that enigmatic word on his lips was
incinerated in the vast and towering belch of the devouring element.

"It was among the most inspiring sights I have ever witnessed."

When Mr. Lavender had completed that record, whose actuality and wealth
of moving detail had greatly affected him, and marked it "For the
Press-Immediate," he felt very cold. It was, in fact, that hour of
dawn when a shiver goes through the world; and, almost with pleasurable
anticipation he took up his lighted candle and stole shivering out to
his pile, rising ghostly to the height of some five feet in the middle
of the dim lawn whereon a faint green tinge was coming with the return
of daylight. Having reached it, he walked round it twice, and readjusted
four volumes of the history of the war as stepping-stones to the top;
then lowering the candle, whose flame burned steadily in the stillness,
he knelt down in the grey dew and set fire to an article in a Sunday
paper. Then, sighing deeply, he returned to his little ladder and, with
some difficulty preserving his balance, mounted to the top, and sat
down with his legs towards the house and his eyes fixed on Aurora's
bedroom-window. He had been there perhaps ten minutes before he
realized that nothing was happening below him, and, climbing down again,
proceeded to the aperture where he had inserted the burning print.
There, by the now considerable daylight, he saw that the flame had gone
out at the words "The Stage is now set for the last act of this colossal
world drama." And convinced that Providence had intended that heartening
sentence to revive his somewhat drooping courage, he thought, "I, too,
shall be making history this morning," and relighting the journal, went
on his hands and knees and beg