him with deep emotion;
but a difference--of dream rather than of dogma--in the quality of their
temperaments accoladed the boy. It was not only that his voice thrilled
with the higher enthusiasms of youth. It held besides an inflexibility
of tone that James Thorold's lacked. Its timbre told that Peter
Thorold's spirit had been tempered in a furnace fierier than the one
which had given forth the older man's. The voice rang out now in excited
pleasure as the boy gripped his father's shoulders. "Oh, but it's good
to see you again, dad," he cried. "You're a great old boy, and I'm proud
of you, sir. Think of it!" he almost shouted. "Ambassador to Forsland!
Say, but that's bully!" He slipped his arm around his father's shoulder,
while James Thorold watched him with eyes that shone with joy. "What do
you call an ambassador?" he demanded laughingly.

"Fortunately," the older man said, "there is no title accompanying the
office."

"Well, I should think not," the boy exclaimed. "Oh, dad, isn't it the
greatest thing in the world that you're to represent the United States
of America?"

James Thorold smiled. "No doubt," he said dryly. His gaze passed his
son to glimpse the crowd at the gate, frantic now with excitement, all
looking forward toward some point on the platform just beyond where the
man and boy were standing. "These United States of America have grown
past my thought of them," he added. The boy caught up the idea eagerly.
"Haven't they, though?" he demanded. "And isn't it wonderful to think
that it's all the same old America, 'the land of the free and the home
of the brave?' Gee, but it's good to be back in it again. I came up
into New York alongside the battleship that brought our boys home from
Mexico," he went on, "and, oh, say, dad, you should have seen that
harbor! I've seen a lot of things for a fellow," he pursued with a touch
of boyish boastfulness, "but I never saw anything in all my life like
that port yesterday. People, and people, and people, waiting, and flags
at half-mast, and a band off somewhere playing a funeral march, and that
battleship with the dead sailors--the fellows who died for our country
at Vera Cruz, you know--creeping up to the dock. Oh, it was--well, I
cried!" He made confession proudly, then hastened into less personal
narrative.

"One of them came from Chicago here," he said. "He was only nineteen
years old, and he was one of the first on the beach after the order to
cross to the cus