“Aunt Basha did it all,” said David.  “If Aunt Basha hadn’t been the most magnificent old black woman who ever carried a snow-white soul, if she hadn’t been the truest patriot in all America, if she hadn’t given everything for her country—­I’d likely never have—­found you.”  His eyes went to the two kind and smiling faces, and his last word was a whisper.  It was so much to have found.  All he had dreamed, people of his own, a straight leg—­and—­his heart’s desire—­service to America.

Mrs. Cabell spoke softly, “I’ve lived a long time and I’ve seen over and over that a good deed spreads happiness like a pebble thrown into water, more than a bad one spreads evil, for good is stronger and more contagious.  We’ve gained this dear kinsman today because of the nobility of an old negro woman.”

David Lance lifted his head quickly.  “It was no small nobility,” he said.  “As Miss Cabell was saying—­”

“I’m your cousin Eleanor,” interrupted Miss Cabell.

David lingered over the name.  “Thank you, my cousin Eleanor.  It’s as you said, nothing more beautiful and wonderful has been done in wonderful America than this thing Aunt Basha did.  It was as gallant as a soldier at the front, for she offered what meant possibly her life.”

“Her little two hundred,” Eleanor spoke gently.  “And so cross at the idea of being paid back!  She wanted to give it.”

David’s face gleamed with a thought as he stared into the firelight, “You see,” he worked out his idea, “by the standards of the angels a gift must be big not according to its size but according to what’s left.  If you have millions and give a few thousand you practically give nothing, for you have millions left.  But Aunt Basha had nothing left.  The angels must have beaten drums and blown trumpets and raised Cain all over Paradise while you sat in the bank, my cousin Eleanor, for the glory of that record gift.  No plutocrat in the land has touched what Aunt Basha did for her country.”

Eleanor’s eyes, sending out not only clear vision but a brown light as of the light of stars, shone on the boy.  She bent forward, and her slender arms were about her knee.  She gazed at David, marveling.  How could it be that a human being might have all that David appeared to her to have—­clear brain, crystal simplicity, manliness, charm of personality, and such strength and beauty besides!

“Yes,” she said, “Aunt Basha gave the most.  She has more right than any of us to say that it’s her country.”  She was silent a moment and then spoke softly a single word.  “America!” said Eleanor reverently.

America!  Her sound has gone out into all lands and her words into the end of the world.  America, who in a year took four million of sons untried, untrained, and made them into a mighty army; who adjusted a nation of a hundred million souls in a turn of the hand to unknown and unheard of conditions.  America, whose greatest glory yet is not these things.  America, of whom scholars and statesmen and generals and multi-millionaires say with throbbing pride today:  “This is my country,” but of whom the least in the land, having brought what they may, however small, to lay on that flaming altar of the world’s safety—­of whom the least in the land may say as truly as the greatest, “This is my country, too.”