he premier of the Browns. "It's a sentiment
to which every premier of ours who ever tried to down him would have
readily subscribed!"

The every-day statesman smiles when he sees the people smile and grows
angry when they grow angry. Now and then appears an inscrutable genius
who finds out what is brewing in their brains and brings it to a head.
He is the epoch maker. Such an one was that little Corsican, who gave a
stagnant pool the storm it needed, until he became overfed and mistook
his ambition for a continuation of his youthful prescience.

* * * * *

Marta had yet to bear the shock of Westerling's death. After learning
the manner of it she went to her room, where she spent a haunted,
sleepless night. The morning found her still tortured by her
visualization of the picture of him, irresolute as the mob pressed
around the Gray headquarters.

"It is as if I had murdered him!" she said. "I let him make love to
me--I let my hand remain in his once--but that was all, Lanny. I--I
couldn't have borne any more. Yet that was enough--enough!"

"But we know now, Marta," Lanstron pleaded, "that the premier of the
Grays held Westerling to a compact that he should not return alive if he
lost. He could not have won, even though you had not helped us against
him. He would only have lost more lives and brought still greater
indignation on his head. His fate was inevitable--and he was a soldier."

But his reasoning only racked her with a shudder.

"If he had only died fighting!" Marta replied. "He died like a rat in a
trap and I--I set the trap!"

"No, destiny set it!" put in Mrs. Galland.

Lanstron dropped down beside Marta's chair.

"Yes, destiny set it," he said, imploringly.

"Just as it set your part for you. And, Marta," Mrs. Galland went on
gently, with what Marta had once called the wisdom of mothers, "Lanny
lives and lives for you. Your destiny is life and to make the most of
life, as you always have. Isn't it, Marta?"

"Yes," she breathed after a pause, in conviction, as she pressed her
mother's hands. "Yes, you have a gift of making things simple and
clear."

Then she looked up to Lanstron and the flame in her eyes, whose leaping,
spontaneous passion he already knew, held something of the eternal, as
her arms crept around his neck.

"You are life, Lanny! You are the destiny of to-day and to-morrow!"

* * * * *

Though it was very late autumn