And always he spoke to the men of marching feet--. Now and then he
sang for them in that thin old voice whose thinness was so overlaid by
the passion of his patriotism that those who listened found no flaw in
it.
"He has sounded forth the trumpet that has never called retreat,
He is sifting forth the hearts of men before his Judgment seat,
O be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet,
Our God is marching on--"
There was no faltering now, no fumbled words. With head up,
singing--"Be jubilant, my feet--"
Sometimes he took Jean with him, but not always. "There are places
that I don't like to have you go, my dear, but those are where I get my
men."
At other times when he came out to where she sat in the car there would
flash before his eyes the vision of his wife's face, as she, too, had
once sat there, waiting--
Sometimes he took the children, and rode with them on a slow-moving
barge from one lock to another, with the limousine meeting them at the
end.
So he travelled the old paths, innocently, as he might have travelled
them throughout the years.
Yet if he thought of those difficult years, he said never a word.
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