Late that afternoon, because she was so shut in that she was choking, because she was consumed with the idea that she must claim her country now or lose it forever, she got up and started for the picture. It was a long, long way to go, and dreadful things were in between--people who would bump against her, hot, uneven streets, horses that might run over her--but she must make the journey. She must make it because the things that she lived on were slipping from her--and she was choking--sinking down--and all alone. Step by step, never knowing just how her foot was going to make the next step, sick with the fear that people were going to run into her--the streets going up and down, the buildings round and round, she did go; holding to the window casings for the last few steps--each step a terrible chasm which she was never sure she was going to be able to cross--she was there at last. And in the window as she stood there, swayingly, was a dark, blurred thing which might have been anything at all. She tried to remember why she had come. What _was_ it--? And then she was sinking down into an abyss. That the hemorrhage came then, that the old man came out and found her and tenderly took her in, that he had her taken where she should have been taken long before, that the doctors said it was too late, and that soon their verdict was confirmed--those are the facts which would seem to tell the rest of the story. But deep down beneath facts rests truth, and the truth is that this is a story with the happiest kind of a happy ending. What facts would call the breeze from an electric fan was in truth the gracious breath of the pines. And when the nurse said “She's going,” she was indeed going, but to a land of great spaces and benign breezes, a land of deep shadows and rushing waters. For a most wondrous thing had happened. She had called to the mountain, and the mountain had heard her voice; and because it was so mighty and so everlasting it drew her to itself, across high brick walls and past millions of hurrying, noisy people--oh, a most triumphant flight! And the mountain said--“I give you this whole great land. It is yours because you have loved it so well. Hills and valleys and rivers and forests and lakes--it is all for you.” Yes, the nurse was quite right; she was going: going for a long sweet sleep beneath trees of many shadows, beside clear waters which had come from distant snows--really going “Out There.” X THE PREPOSTEROUS MOTIVE The Governor was sitting alone in his private office with an open letter in his hand. He was devoutly and gloomily wishing that some other man was just then in his shoes. The Governor had not devoted a large portion of his life to nursing a desire of that nature, for he was a man in whose soul the flame of self-satisfaction glowed cheeringly; but just now there were reasons, and he deemed them ample, for deploring that he had been made chief executive of his native State.