A spasm as of physical pain seized and shook the kneeling man. The very depths were stirred.
Something to which he had long been a stranger possessed and mastered him. His eyes still upraised, the white moon glare beating upon his face, he spoke aloud—spoke as though addressing a visible friend, not an unseen God.
“You’ve lifted me out of the mire,” he breathed. “You have shown me the light after all these black years. You have given me the chance to strike for this country that You made free and great. Make my deeds thank You as my words can’t!”
The voice ceased; then continued once more, firm yet vibrant with mighty emotion:
“You have made good Your promise that ‘a little child shall lead them.’ A child has been Your instrument in starting me in the right direction. Keep me on that road, nor let my grosser self triumph over my manhood again. I offer my life to You—it is all I have to offer in atonement. Make it clean and strong as once it was. Give me the chance to lay it on Your altar as a sacrifice to liberty and patriotism. Oh, teach me to deserve the chance that has come to me this night!”
He rose to his feet, full of a strange, exalted calm. He felt that every word of his heart-wrung prayer had reached beyond the frontier of the star country overhead and to the very throne of the Hearer and Answerer.
Somewhere on that dusty, moonlit road Dad Brinton, town drunkard, was forever left behind.
And hastening blithely to his country’s service marched James Dadd, army recruit!
CHAPTER IX
A LESSON IN MANNERS
TEN days later an interminably long transport-train puffed out of the Cincinnati station. Its three engines were gay in polished brass and red smokestacks. All three were decked with sooty American flags.