The town was alive with bands and cheers and shouts and marching; the distinct noises rose and fell and fused and separated, but kept their distance.  When one body of sound, which unnoticed by the lovers had been growing less vague, more compact, broke all at once into loud proximity—­men marching, men shouting, men singing.  The two, hand tight in hand, started, looked at each other, listened—­and then a name came in a dozen sonorous voices, as they used to shout it in college days, across the Berkeley Oval.

“McLean!  McLean!” they called.

“Oh, Johnny McLean!” and “Come out there, oh, Johnny McLean!” That was Baby Thomas.

“By Jove, they’ve trapped me,” he said, smiling in the dark and holding the hand tighter as the swinging steps stopped in front of the house of the garden.  “Brant must have told.”

“They’ve certainly found you,” the girl said.  Her arms, lifted slowly, went about his neck swiftly.  “You’re mine—­ but you’re theirs to-night.  I haven’t a right to so much of you even.  You’re theirs.  Go.”  And she held him.  But in a second she had pushed him away.  “Go,” she said.  “You’re theirs, bless every one of them.”

She was standing alone in the dark, sweet garden and there was a roar in the street which meant that he had opened the door and they had seen him.  And with that there were shouts of “Put him up”—­“Carry him”—­“Carry the boy,” and laughter and shouting and then again the measured tread of many men retreating down the street, and men’s voices singing together.  The girl in the dark garden stood laughing, crying, and listened.

“Mother of men!”—­

the deep voices sang—­

“Mother of men grown strong in giving—­
Honor to him thy light have led;
Rich in the toil of thousands living,
Proud of the deeds of thousands dead! 
We who have felt thy power, and known thee,
We in whose lives thy lights avail,
High, in our hearts enshrined, enthrone thee,
Mother of men, old Yale!”

*** End of the project gutenberg EBOOK, the courage of the commonplace ***

This file should be named courc10.txt or courc10.zip
Corrected editions of our eBooks get a new number, courc11.txt
versions based on separate sources get new letter, courc10a.txt

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the us unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.  Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, even years after the official publication date.

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.  The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by those who wish to do so.