would be a memorable service to have rendered.” We had come into the divine, sad stillness of the woods, where the warm sunlight shone through the gray moss, lighting the curtained solitudes away and away into the depths of the golden afternoon; and somewhere amid the miles of sleeping wilderness sounded the hoarse honk of the automobile. The Replacers were abroad, enjoying what they could in this country where they did not belong, and which did not as yet belong to them. Once again we heard their honk off to our left, from a farther distance, and I am glad to say that we did not see them at all. “If,” said John Mayrant, “what you have said is true, the nation had better get on its knees and pray God to give it grace.” I looked at the boy and saw that his countenance had grown very fine. “The act,” I said, “would bring grace, wherever it comes from.” “Yes,” he assented. “If in the stars and awfulness of space there’s nothing, that does not trouble me; for my greater self is inside me, safe. And our country has a greater self somewhere. Think!” “I do not have to think,” I replied, “when I know the nobleness we have risen to at times.” “And I,” he pursued, “happen to believe it is not all only stars and space; and that God, as much as any ship-builder, rejoices to watch every tiniest boat meet and brave the storm.” Out of his troubles he had brought such mood, sweetness instead of bitterness; he was saying as plainly as if his actual words said it, “Misfortune has come to me, and I am going to make the best of it.” His nobleness, his moral elegance, compelled him to this, and I envied him, not sure if I myself, thus placed, would acquit myself so well. And there was in his sweetness a contagion that strangely reconciled me to the troubled aspects of our national hour. I thought, “Invisible among our eighty millions there is a quiet legion living untainted in the depths, while the yellow rich, the prismatic scum and bubbles, boil on the surface.” Yes, he had accidentally helped me, and I wished doubly that I might help him. It was well enough he should feel he must not shirk his duty, but how much better if he could be led to see that marrying where he did not love was no duty of his.