aidens, with such eyes as would grow dim
Over a wounded hound
Seem each one to have caught the strength of him
Whose sword-knot she hath hound.

"Thus, girt without and garrisoned at home,
Day patient following day,
Old Charleston looks from roof and spire and dome
Across her tranquil bay.

"Shall the spring dawn, and she, still clad in steel,
And with an unscathed brow,
Watch o'er a sea unvexed by hostile keel
As fair and free as now?

"We know not. In the Temples of the Fates
God has inscribed her doom;
And, all untroubled in her faith she waits
Her triumph or her tomb!"

The hushed charm of their mother's voice fascinated the children.
Troubled, uncertain, Ailsa rose, took a few irresolute steps toward
the extension where her brother-in-law still paced to and fro in
the darkness, the tip of his cigar aglow. Then she turned suddenly.

"_Can't_ you understand, Ailsa?" asked her sister-in-law wistfully.

"Celia--dearest," she stammered, "I simply can't understand. . . .
I thought the nation was greater than all----"

"The State is greater, dear. Good men will realise that when they
see a sovereign people standing all alone for human truth and
justice--standing with book and sword under God's favour, as
sturdily as ever Israel stood in battle fo' the right!--I don't
mean to be disloyal to my husband in saying this befo' my children.
But you ask me, and I must tell the truth if I answer at all."

Slender, upright, transfigured with a flushed and girlish beauty
wholly strange to them, she moved restlessly back and forth across
the room, a slim, lovely, militant figure all aglow with
inspiration, all aquiver with emotion too long and loyally
suppressed.

Paige and Marye, astonished, watched her without a word. Ailsa
stood with one hand resting on the mantel, a trifle pale but also
silent, her startled eyes following this new incarnation wearing
the familiar shape of Celia Craig.

"Ailsa!"

"Yes, dear."

"Can you think evil of a people who po' out their hearts in prayer
and praise? Do traitors importune fo' blessings?"

She turned nervously to the piano and struck a ringing chord,
another--and dropped to the chair, head bowed on her slim childish
neck. Presently there stole through the silence a tremulous voice
intoning the "Libera Nos," with its strange refrain:

"_A furore Normanorum Libera nos, O Domme_!" Then, head raised, the
gas-light flashing