On the envelope was stamped 'Address unknown.'
In the hour of success, Fate, after her playful manner, had kicked him off his pedestal and crushed him like a beetle.
The laurels had developed spines that lacerated his hands.
He had lost Frances, utterly lost her.
What did he want with this cheering?
But still the crowd yelled on tumultuously and the great moment lingered—the moment of universal acclamation—mocking him—glorifying him——
Spirit-of-Iron!
IX
Autumn dawned. The epic railway lay completed from sea to sea. Its last spike had been the last nail in the coffin of the Old Order. The dead heroes of the little war, who had made that victory possible, slept peacefully, heedless of the thunder of the vast tide of humanity now bearing down upon the plains for which they died—the tide which was the first wave of the iron-spirited nation to come.