in Buffalo, Rochester, Toronto and scores of cities on
both sides of the Great Lakes--silent multitudes watched the glare
against the midnight sky; and many wept for joy; and many prayed. All
understood the meaning of that sight. The light upon the heavens seemed
a signal and a beacon--a promise that the Old Times had passed away
forever--a covenant of the New.

And, as the final explosion shattered the Temple of Bondage to wreckage,
flung it far into the rushing river and swept it over the leaping,
thundering Falls, the news flashed on a thousand wires, to all cities
and all lands; and though the mercenaries of the two dead world-masters
still might struggle and might strive to beat the toilers back to
slavery again, their days were numbered and their powers forever broken.

Together in the doorway of the refuge at Port Colborne, Catherine stood
with Gabriel, watching the beacon of liberty upon the heavens. The
light, a halo round her eager face, showed his powerful figure and the
smile of triumph in his eyes. His left arm, broken by the fall in the
aeroplane, now rested in a sling. His right, protecting in its strength,
was round the girl. And as her head found shelter and rest, at length,
upon his shoulder, she, too, smiled; and her eyes seemed to see visions
in the glory of the sky.

"Visions!" said she, softly, as though voicing a universal thought. "Do
you behold them, too?"

He nodded.

"Yes," he answered, "and they are beautiful and sweet and pure!"

"Visions that we now shall surely see?"

"Shall surely see!" he echoed; and a little silence fell. Far off, they
seemed to hear a vast and thousand-throated cheering, that the
night-wind brought to them in long and heart-inspiring cadences.

"Gabriel," she said, at last.

"Well?"

"I wish _he_ might have seen them, and have understood! In spite of all
he did, and was, he was my father!"

"Yes," answered Gabriel, sensing her grief. "But would you have had him
live through this? Live, with the whole world out of his grasp, again?
Live, with all his plans wrecked and broken? Live on in this new time,
where he could have comprehended nothing? Live on, in misery and rage
and impotence?

"Your father was an old man, Catherine. You know as well as I
do--better, perhaps--the whole trend of his life's thought and ambition.
Even if he'd lived, he couldn't have changed, now, at his age. It would
have been an utter impossibility. Why say more?"

Catherine made