impatiently.

She went back to her work. "It will be on your own head if you don't
sleep to-night, not on mine."

"The Trumpeter Swan" was a story of many pages. Randy had confined
himself to no conventional limits. He had a story to tell, and he did
not bring it to an end until the end came naturally. In it he had asked
all of the questions which had torn his soul. What of the men who had
fought? What of their futures? What of their high courage? Their high
vision? Was it all now to be wasted? All of that aroused emotion? All of
that disciplined endeavor? Would they still "carry on" in the spirit of
that crusade, or would they sink back, and forget?

His hero was a simple lad. He had fought for his country. He had found
when he came back that other men had made money while he fought for
them. He loved a girl. And in his absence she had loved someone else.
For a time he was overthrown.

Yet he had been one of a glorious company. One of that great flock which
had winged its exalted flight to France. Throughout the story Randy wove
the theme of the big white bird in the glass case. His hero felt himself
likewise on the shelf, shut-in, stuffed, dead--his trumpet silent.

"Am I, too, in a glass case?" he asked himself; "will my trumpet never
sound again?"

The first part of the story ended there. "Jove," Cope said, as he looked
up, "that boy can write----"

Louise had stopped working. "It is rather--tremendous, don't you think?"

Archibald nodded. "In a quiet way it thrills. He hasn't used a word too
much. But he carries one with him to a sort of--upper sky----"

Becky, flushing and paling with the thought of such praise as this for
Randy, said, "I always thought he could do it."

But even she had not known that Randy could do what he did in the second
part of the story.

For in it Randy answered his own questions. There was no limit to a
man's powers, no limits to his patriotism, if only he believed in
himself. He must strive, of course, to achieve. But striving made him
strong. His task might be simple, but its very simplicity demanded that
he put his best into it. He must not measure himself by the rule of
little men. If other men had made money while he fought, then let them
be weighed down by their bags of gold. He would not for one moment set
against their greed those sacred months of self-sacrifice.

And as for the woman he loved. If his love meant anything it must burn
with a pure flame. What he might