ours."

Ringing shouts answered the summons. The camp was in a tumult of
preparation immediately; Houston was lending his great physical strength
to the mechanical difficulties to be encountered. A crowd of men was
around. Suddenly a woman touched him on the arm, and he straightened
himself and looked at her.

"You will kill Santa Anna, General? You will kill this fiend who has
escaped from hell! By the mother of Christ, I ask it."

"My dear madam!"

He was so moved with pity that he could not for a moment or two give
her any stronger assurance. For this suppliant, pallid and frenzied with
sorrow, was the once beautiful Senora Worth. He looked at her hollow
eyes, and shrunk form, and worn clothing, and remembered with a pang,
the lovely, gracious lady clad in satin and lace, with a jewelled comb
in her fine hair and a jewelled fan in her beautiful hands, and a wave
of pity and anger passed like a flame over his face.

"By the memory of my own dear mother, Senora, I will make Santa Anna pay
the full price of his cruelties."

"Thank you, Senor"; and she glided away with her tearless eyes fixed
upon the curl of black hair in her open palm.

CHAPTER XVI. THE LOADSTONE IN THE BREAST.

"But to the hero, when his sword
Has won the battle for the free,
Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word,
And in its hollow tones are heard.
The thanks of millions yet to be,"

"Who battled for the true and just,

"And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance.

"And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees."

The memorial of wrongs, which resulted in the Declaration of Texan
Independence, was drawn up with statesmanlike ability by David G.
Burnett, a native of New Jersey, a man of great learning, dignity, and
experience; who, as early as 1806, sailed from New York to join Miranda
in his effort to give Spanish America liberty. The paper need not be
quoted here. It gave the greatest prominence to the refusal of trial
by jury, the failure too establish a system of public education, the
tyranny of military law, the demand that the colonists should give up
arms necessary for their protection or their sustenance, the inciting
of the Indians to massacre the American settlers, and the refusal of
the right to worship the Almighty according to the dictates of their
own consciences