Jewel Weed

								

though few of them lived to tell of their own bravery? It makes the lump
come up in my throat even to remember it, just as it did when I first
heard the news and knew that my boy-lover was there."
There was silence a moment.
"Ah, Dick, you have a young body to match your heart," Mrs. Percival
went on, "but Dad, before he was twenty, carried a bullet in his side.
He had to conquer pain before he could spend strength on other things."
Dick rubbed his cheek with the mother's trembling hand.
"Yes," he said soberly, "it must have been harder to endure the
sufferings that clung to him and killed him at last than it would have
been to give everything in one swift sacrifice. Endurance,--that's a
word I don't know, do I, mother?"
"No, dear, that's the word you know least; but you'll have to learn it."
"Ellery, I guess that's where you have the advantage of me." Dick looked
up with a smile.
"If I have, it's been a dour lesson," Norris answered with a wry face.
"Well, if Dad gave his life to his country by dying, I mean to give mine
by living," Dick went on. "There must be things that need doing."
"More than there are men to do them," said his mother softly. "You have
his spirit and his genius. You have health, too. Don't put a bullet in
your young manhood."
"What do you mean, mother?"
"There are a thousand wounds besides those from a gun. I'm counting on
you to live his life as he would have liked to live it--to be his son,
Dick."
"You mustn't expect the sun and the moon to stand still before me."
"Oh, well, I dare say I'm as foolish as other mothers." Mrs. Percival
laughed as though she must do that or cry. "But you were certainly born
to something, Dick. You've shown it ever since you organized your first
militia company and whipped the five-year-olds in the next street."
"And he's kept right on bossing his particular gang ever since. Richard
Dux," smiled Ellery.
The boy grinned up at them, and his mind traveled to those later days
when that leadership of his was so easily acknowledged as to be
axiomatic. He saw in panorama the stormy joys of college life with the
victories of the field. He beheld again the quieter hours when the young
men saw visions together and felt themselves called to put shoulder to
the car of righteousness, while they discussed with the sublime
self-sufficiency of inexperience the politics and sociology of the
world. The fellows all believed in him as one of those who are destined
to be prime pushers at the wheel. Perhaps he would be among those
conquerors who climb aboard and ride, forgetful of the plodding crowd
which toils at the drudgery of progress but does not taste its glory. So
many oblivions go to make one reputation.
Dick knew that power was in him. To others it showed in his unconscious
self-confidence of carriage, in his eyes that glowed, in the electric
something that compelled attraction.
But now college visions were fading into "the light of common day". The