"Who cries that the days of daring are those that are faded far, That never a light burns planet bright to be hailed as the hero's star? Let the deeds of the dead be laurelled, the brave of the elder years, But a song we say, for the men of to-day, who have proved themselves their peers." CLINTON SCOLLARD THE FINAL PROPOSITIONS A DRAMA OF THE CIVIL WAR "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?" SHAKESPEARE I.--AT THE TOP OF THE HILL There wasn't a harder body of fighters in the army of the United States than "Kirke's Lambs." The only resemblance between this modern regiment and the famous body of horse which divided dishonors with Jeffreys after Sedgemoor, nearly two hundred years before, was in the name of their commander, for they were held under too iron a rule to degenerate into brutal and ferocious excesses. Besides, Kirke and the generals he served under always gave that body of hard riders plenty to do, so that they found an easy vent for their superfluous energies in legitimate fighting,--if any can be so called. Kirke had grown up with the regiment from a subaltern to the colonel. Drafts had restored its depleted members from time to time, but in the spring of 1865 the Civil War was about over, and it was not considered necessary to complete its quota by an infusion of new blood then. There was but a handful of them left, therefore. The others--well, they said the bodies of "Kirke's Lambs" blazed a pathway from the Mississippi to the sea. Kirke was an iron man everywhere and in everything,--in his business, in his regiment, and in his family, which now consisted of one solitary woman. The single child who had blessed the union had died before the war. The woman had been left alone for over four years. Kirke had never left the front and what he conceived to be his duty. He was a reticent, self-contained, undemonstrative man, whose affection made no show on the surface, though the current of it ran very still and deep. He actually idolized the woman who bore his name and had borne his son. On the death of that son he had made no great display of grief, though it cut him to the heart; and in general he gave little outward evidence of any strong affection to the poor, weak wife left so much alone and pining, like every woman in a like case. She was a nervous, high-strung little body, utterly unable to see beneath the outward show; not strong enough to fathom Kirke's depths,--her heart was too light a plummet,--and it was a wonder to Jack Broadhead, who was Kirke's dearest friend and the second in command of the "Lambs," how she ever inspired the devotion that he, with better insight, divined that Kirke cherished for her.