In the centre of the platform stood a clear-eyed, white-faced goddess, with the flag of the new country draped around her slender form, and the sunlight of this day of freedom beating down upon her shining head. She was speaking, but in the difficult new tongue. Riego could not take his eyes away, but he reached out his hand quickly to touch Pascual. The sweet-faced señora leaned over him. "America," she whispered in explanation. _America!_ Beautiful America! Riego crept forward, unconscious now of the crowd around. Oh, to _understand_ America! Then a strange thing happened. The beautiful goddess suddenly ceased speaking, and her face became clouded with thought. Her eyes were focussed on the eager boy who had crept forward and was standing spellbound before her--the most conspicuous of the group of dark-faced, bewildered children. Riego did not know that everybody in that audience had suddenly leaned forward in dead silence. After one tense moment the Beautiful One advanced to the edge of the platform and descended the steps till she stood almost among them. And now this strange, new, better country was speaking to Riego _in his own tongue_! "You didn't _understand_ me, did you?" she asked in Spanish. "Not _then_, my lady!--but _now_!" It was Riego who answered her, but the other dark faces were alight like his own now. The crowd was leaning forward again. "Ah, that is all the trouble!" said the Beautiful One. "Our new people simply do not understand America! Do you wish me to tell you the story in Spanish?" There were many who answered this time. Then she told them in their own tongue of the great struggle for a new freedom and a new peace which had been waged upon this soil over a hundred years before. And the breathless children heard how this new ideal of freedom had passed all bounds of the country in which it was born, and thrilled all lands. They heard how the noble La Fayette of France, Steuben of Prussia, and Kosciuszko of Poland each had offered his all that America might be forever a refuge for the oppressed. They learned how the German De Kalb had laid down his life at Camden for the new faith, and how Count Pulaski had poured out the last drop of his Polish blood to make the world's great dream of freedom "come true." Then the Beautiful One told the children how, throughout the more than one hundred years since the fight was won, the footsore and oppressed of many lands have found in America work and a just reward for working, the freedom to do anything which does not harm another, and the great gift of peace! "And now," exclaimed the speaker, "which of you will promise with me to be loyal to America? Stand up!" And they stood up--the dark children, the white-faced señoritas, the gringo soldiers, and all!--and repeated after the Beautiful One: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the republic for which it stands, One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."