“Yes.”

“Has he ever written anything before?” Louise asked.

“Lots of little things.  Lovely things——­”

“Have they been published?”

“I don’t think he has tried.”

Becky had the manuscript in her work-bag.  She brought it out and handed it to Archibald.  “You are sure you aren’t too tired?”

Louise glanced up from her beaded bag.  “You’ve had a hard day, Arch.  You mustn’t do too much.”

“I won’t, Louise,” impatiently.

She went back to her work.  “It will be on your own head if you don’t sleep to-night, not on mine.”

“The Trumpeter Swan” was a story of many pages.  Randy had confined himself to no conventional limits.  He had a story to tell, and he did not bring it to an end until the end came naturally.  In it he had asked all of the questions which had torn his soul.  What of the men who had fought?  What of their futures?  What of their high courage?  Their high vision?  Was it all now to be wasted?  All of that aroused emotion?  All of that disciplined endeavor?  Would they still “carry on” in the spirit of that crusade, or would they sink back, and forget?

His hero was a simple lad.  He had fought for his country.  He had found when he came back that other men had made money while he fought for them.  He loved a girl.  And in his absence she had loved someone else.  For a time he was overthrown.

Yet he had been one of a glorious company.  One of that great flock which had winged its exalted flight to France.  Throughout the story Randy wove the theme of the big white bird in the glass case.  His hero felt himself likewise on the shelf, shut-in, stuffed, dead—­his trumpet silent.

“Am I, too, in a glass case?” he asked himself; “will my trumpet never sound again?”

The first part of the story ended there.  “Jove,” Cope said, as he looked up, “that boy can write——­”

Louise had stopped working.  “It is rather—­tremendous, don’t you think?”

Archibald nodded.  “In a quiet way it thrills.  He hasn’t used a word too much.  But he carries one with him to a sort of—­upper sky——­”

Becky, flushing and paling with the thought of such praise as this for Randy, said, “I always thought he could do it.”

But even she had not known that Randy could do what he did in the second part of the story.

For in it Randy answered his own questions.  There was no limit to a man’s powers, no limits to his patriotism, if only he believed in himself.  He must strive, of course, to achieve.  But striving made him strong.  His task might be simple, but its very simplicity demanded that he put his best into it.  He must not measure himself by the rule of little men.  If other men had made money while he fought, then let them be weighed down by their bags of gold.  He would not for one moment set against their greed those sacred months of self-sacrifice.

And as for the woman he loved.  If his love meant anything it must burn with a pure flame.  What he might have been for her, he would be because of her.  He would not be less a man because he had loved her.