The sword was double-edged, and dug and turned in his heart. For the girl who lent aid, willing or reluctant, to the deliberate deception practiced in the Name which is above all other names, had a face as clear as the sun, and eyes honest as Heaven, and he loved her! The main body of the audience could not withdraw their eyes from the narrator of the telling anecdote of the drummer-boy of Gettysburg. The story was new to all there, although he had assumed their familiarity with it. It was graphic; it was pathetic to heart-break; it thrilled and glowed and coruscated with self-devotion and patriotism; it was an inimitable illustration of the point just made by the orator, who was carried clear out of himself by the theme. And not one person there—not even March Gilchrist, fiercely distrustful of the man and all his works—suspected that it was an original incident, home-grown, homespun, and home-woven. Write it not down as a sin against the popular pastor of the Fairhill First Church that the Gettysburg hero was a twenty-four-year-old child of the speaker’s brain. If the Mill of the Press, and the Foundry of Tradition cannot turn out illustrations numerous and pat enough to suit every subject and time, private enterprise must supply personal demand. “I think young Gilchrist was ill in church to-day,” observed Mr. Wayt to his wife that afternoon, as she fed him with the dainty repast he could not go to the table to eat. He lay on the settee in the wide, cool hall, supported by linen-covered cushions. She had brought him, as a persuasive first course, a cup of delicious bouillon, ice-cold, and administered it to him, spoonful by spoonful. “He changed color, and seemed to be in great pain for an instant,” he continued, after another sip. “His mother looked very uneasy, and apparently advised him to go out. I judged from his fluctuations of color that it was vertigo—or a severe pain in the head. He would not leave until the services were over. I have few more attentive hearers than March.” Another sip. “If I should be the means of bringing him into the Church, it would be a happy day for his pious mother. Should my headache abate in the course of an hour or so, I will look in and inquire how he is. It would only be courteous and neighborly.” In the adjoining dining room, the door of which the draught had opened a few inches, the family circle of the solicitous pastor heard every word of the communication, although his accents were subdued by pain. Sharp-eared-and-eyed Perry winked at Hetty. “He won’t find Mr. March Gilchrist,” he mouthed in a fashion invented by himself, to convey pert speeches only to the person for whom they were invented. “He went to New York on the five o’clock train. I saw him. He said he was going to dine with a friend. I heard him. A man asked him. Another slice of beef, please, Hetty! Rare, and a bit of fat! Some gravy on my potatoes, too!”