"I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps,
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on—"
It was an old tune, but the words were new to Captain Hewes—as the girl chanted them, in that repressed voice that yet tore the heart out of him.
"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat,
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant my feet,
Our God is marching on—"
The Captain sat on the edge of his chair. His face was illumined.
"By Jove," he ejaculated, "that's topping!"
Drusilla stood up with her back to the piano, and sang without music.
"In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea—
With the glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me,
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on—"
She wore a gown of sheer dull blue, there was a red rose in her hair—her white arms, her white neck, the blue and red, youth and fire, strength and purity.
When she finished the room was very still. The big Englishman had no words for such a moment. The music had swept him up to unexpected heights of emotion. While Drusilla sang he had glimpsed for the first time the meaning of democracy, he had seen, indeed, in a great and lofty sense, for the first time—America.
Among the shadows a young man shrank in his seat. His vision was not of Democracy, but of a freezing night—of a ragged old voice rising from the blackness of a steep ravine—