son.  I am no relation of his.’  If the bishop had wished to talk to me after that, Mrs. Brice, he might have made my life a little easier—­a little sweeter.  I know that they are not all like that.  But it was by just such things that I was embittered when I was a boy.”  He stopped, and when he spoke again, it was more slowly, more gently, than any of them had heard him speak in all his life before.  “I wish that some of the blessings which I am leaving now had come to me then—­when I was a boy.  I might have done my little share in making the world a brighter place to live in, as all of you have done.  Yes, as all of you are now doing for me.  I am leaving the world with a better opinion of it than I ever held in life.  God hid the sun from me when I was a little child.  Margaret Brice,” he said, “if I had had such a mother as you, I would have been softened then.  I thank God that He sent you when He did.”

The widow bowed her head, and a tear fell upon his pillow.

“I have done nothing,” she murmured, “nothing.”

“So shall they answer at the last whom He has chosen,” said the Judge.  “I was sick, and ye visited me.  He has promised to remember those who do that.  Hold up your head, my daughter.  God has been good to you.  He has given you a son whom all men may look in the face, of whom you need never be ashamed.  Stephen,” said the Judge, “come here.”

Stephen made his way to the bedside, but because of the moisture in his eyes he saw but dimly the gaunt face.  And yet he shrank back in awe at the change in it.  So must all of the martyrs have looked when the fire of the faggots licked their feet.  So must John Bunyan have stared through his prison bars at the sky.

“Stephen,” he said, “you have been faithful in a few things.  So shall you be made ruler over many things.  The little I have I leave to you, and the chief of this is an untarnished name.  I know that you will be true to it because I have tried your strength.  Listen carefully to what I have to say, for I have thought over it long.  In the days gone by our fathers worked for the good of the people, and they had no thought of gain.  A time is coming when we shall need that blood and that bone in this Republic.  Wealth not yet dreamed of will flow out of this land, and the waters of it will rot all save the pure, and corrupt all save the incorruptible.  Half-tried men wilt go down before that flood.  You and those like you will remember how your fathers governed,—­strongly, sternly, justly.  It was so that they governed themselves.

“Be vigilant.  Serve your city, serve your state, but above all serve your country.”