She put out her hands blindly before her as she reached the head table and heard them cheering her husband’s name—and her own. She felt her way into her place. She glanced down into her husband’s surprised face and gave a terrified semblance of a smile. Then the whole room seemed to fuse before her. She has never been able to recollect connectedly the events of that evening. The dinner began, progressed, and, after the manner of all dinners, at last ended. Sam Hod arose. He clinked on a water-glass with his knife. The hallful saw him and gradually grew quiet. It was a beautiful speech that the editor made. He began with the part Vermont has played in every war in which America has ever engaged. He told the story of the boys who marched away in ’61 behind John Farrington. He recounted the story of Captain Farrington’s death; the succession of “Jack Fuller the First” to the place of honor in the Company, the brilliant war-record of the regiment. He told of the home-coming; of the banquet fifty-two years before. He told smoothly of the events leading up to America’s entry into the war. His quotation of the President’s famous indictments against Germany brought ovation after ovation from the home-folks, who were worked up to hysterical pitch. And when it was over the editor said: “To-night, before sitting down to this farewell banquet to our sons, many of whom are going away from us never to return—to-night I was the recipient of a strange request. It came from the last survivor of that famous Company of Sixty-two who fifty-two years ago saw Dashing Captain Jack Fuller of glorious memory, raise aloft this receptacle of rare vintage and propose a dramatic thing. “This was the request: By some strange fate the evening when the last toast was to be given to the illustrious dead comes at the terrifically tragic moment when the sons of many of these men are going forward to offer their lives in a new democracy. It has been suggested that nothing could have more approval from Dashing Captain Jack himself—or from all of those one hundred and six brave men who have crossed from the battlefields of earthly life into a blessed reward for their altruism—than that this toast should be given after all—if not by the two survivors, then by the leader of the local heroes who have volunteered to go “Over There” and by their sacrifice make the earth a finer, fairer, better place in which to dwell. “The Toast to Forty-five,” famous for fifty-two years, will be given at last amid this assembly of another quota of the Union’s soldiers about to go forth to preserve the same great principle for which their fathers laid their all upon the altar.” There was silence for a time. Then came another attempt at another ovation. But it died in the excitement of the thing transpiring at that speaker’s table. Sam Hod was opening the famous vintage.