"I'm going to ask Sandy to recite," Knight whispered to her as there fell a silence.
"Get him to do 'The Bridge!'" Blue Bonnet said with dancing eyes.
"I'm sure he'd rather do 'We are Seven,'" he replied, laughing.
"I wish he'd recite the 'Hymn of the Alamo,'" said Alec, who had overheard the conversation. "Ask him to, Knight,—he'll do anything for you, and that's a fine poem."
"Alec wrote an essay on the Alamo," Blue Bonnet explained to Knight, "and it won a prize—the Sargent prize—in our school this year."
Alec squirmed with a boyish dislike of hearing himself praised; but Knight slapped him on the shoulder enthusiastically.
"Bully for you, old chap! Tell the fellows the story of the Alamo, will you? Uncle Bayard likes them to hear historical things like that—can't hear them too often."
Alec looked horrified at the idea, but Blue Bonnet joined Knight in urging him. "You tell the story of the fight and maybe Sandy will finish with the Hymn."
Sandy promising to do his part, Alec finally yielded. Sinking far back in the shadow where his face could not be seen by any of the great circle of listeners, and his voice came out of the blackness with a decided tremor in it, the boy told, and told well, the story of the frontier riflemen in their struggle for the liberation of Texas from the yoke of the Mexican dictator.
How the Texas lads thrilled at the recital of heroism, and thrilled at the mention of such names as Travis and Crockett! It was not a new tale; not a boy there but knew the story of that handful of men—less than two hundred of them—who, barricading themselves within the Alamo fortress, for ten days defied the Mexicans, over four thousand strong; only to be massacred to a man in the final heartrending fall.