In the restless eyes of Cecil Stark there seemed reflected the hunger, ignorance and hope of a new-born nation, together with the spirit of its genius and the solemn magnitude of its destiny. He stood for young America; he typified that majestic land over which the first silver of day had broken, whose transcendent future, sung by the Sons of the Morning, already filled with music a thrilling dawn. Dayspring had touched her eastern shores and now, sweeping over her virgin bosom, warmed the heart that beat there. It advanced with the speed of light, and promised soon to illuminate her spirit, even as the sun himself diurnally swept her being from ocean to ocean; then passed beyond her Golden Gate, that he might dip in the Pacific and behold the horizons of the East. Against this lad's single heart and sanguine ardour now stood the stern figure of Maurice Malherb; and he was not the best type of Englishman to discuss with youthful America the questions of that hour. Yet the master stood for more than British conservatism and prejudice. He represented glorious traditions and a significant past. Wise and tolerant exposition of their differences had made Stark the man's friend; rational argument and some allowance for the point of view had impressed this young heir of the future and warmed a heart already full of personal gratitude; but Malherb adopted an unwise position. Calm discussion never distinguished his methods; to find in the welfare and advancement of humanity at large a common ground for nations, was no ambition of his. He did not point backward to history and invite Cecil Stark to claim his glorious birthright in the story of the Anglo-Saxon race--a course reasonable enough one hundred years ago, before the American family became hybrid. He did not indicate his guest's just right, title and share in British story and glory; he did not remind Stark that he was the fellow in blood of Drake and Raleigh, of Shakespeare and Milton; but he denounced all Americans as traitors to their fatherland, spoke of the Revolution, not of the Wars of Independence, and blamed the New World with a rabid bitterness that indicated his class-attitude and justified America more thoroughly than any power of rhetoric or oratory could have done. Sometimes they agreed to differ, and dropped the subject without heat; more often Malherb broke off with an oath and cursed the weather for still keeping an enemy of England beneath his roof. And yet, despite his flagrant passions and narrow sympathy, he won Cecil Stark, as he won many others, by some magic of character that rose superior to his temper and persistent pride. Once the American summed the situation in a biting phrase, that stuck with his country's foe long after the speaker had forgotten it. They sat over their wine after dinner, and the lad spoke with pride of the part that a kinsman had played in the capture of the British General Burgoyne.