d Welles and General Halleck and Governor
Dennison, and back in the gloom the young Robert Lincoln. But he
observed them only as he would have observed figures in a picture. They
were but shadows; the living man was he who was struggling on the bed
with death.

Lincoln's great arms and chest were naked, and Stanton, who had thought
of him as meagre and shrunken, was amazed at their sinewy strength.
He remembered that he had once heard of him as a village Hercules. The
President was unconscious, but some tortured nerve made him moan like
an animal in pain. It was a strange sound to hear from one who had been
wont to suffer with tight lips. To Stanton it heightened the spectral
unreality of the scene. He seemed to be looking at a death in a stage
tragedy.

The trivial voice of Welles broke the silence. He had to give voice to
the emotion which choked him.

"His dream has come true," he said--"the dream he told us about at the
Cabinet this morning. His ship is nearing the dark shore. He thought it
signified good news from Sherman."

Stanton did not reply. To save his life he could not have uttered a
word.

Then Gurley, the minister, spoke, very gently, for he was a simple man
sorely moved.

"He has looked so tired for so long. He will have rest now, the deep
rest of the people of God.... He has died for us all.... To-day nineteen
hundred years ago the Son of Man gave His life for the world.... The
President has followed in his Master's steps."

Sumner was repeating softly to himself, like a litany, that sentence
from the second Inaugural--"With malice toward none, with charity for
all."

But Stanton was in no mood for words. He was looking at the figure on
the bed, the great chest heaving with the laboured but regular breath,
and living again the years of colleagueship and conflict. He had been
Loyal to him: yes, thank God he had been loyal. He had quarrelled,
thwarted, criticised, but he had never failed him in a crisis. He had
held up his hands as Aaron and Hur held up the hands of Moses...

The Secretary for War was not in the habit of underrating his own
talents and achievements. But in that moment they seemed less than
nothing. Humility shook him like a passion. Till his dying day his one
boast must be that he had served that figure on the camp-bed. It had
been his high fortune to have his lot cast in the vicinity of supreme
genius. With awe he realised that he was looking upon the passing of
the very gre