Life, life was to be
theirs even yet! What had renewed it?
But one of the men had caught something on his fork and extracted
it from the food on his plate. It was an overlooked _wick_. The
major's wife had begun to boil up the tallow candles. [Fact.] But
the cheer that shook that rough log roof came right from hearts
that blessed her, and brought her to the door of the men's
mess-room. The men were on their feet instantly. "A light has
broken upon us, or rather _within_ us, Mrs. Lysle!" cried a
self-selected spokesman.
"Illuminating, isn't it, boys?" She laughed, then turned away, for
the cheers and tears were very close together.
Then one day when even starving stomachs almost revolted at the
continued coarse mixture, a ribbon of blue proclaimed the open sea,
and into those waters swept the longed-for ship. Yet, strangely
enough, that night the "Mother o' the Men" wept a storm of tears,
the only tears she had yielded to in those long five years. For
with its blessing of food the ship had her hold bursting with
liquors and wines, the hideous commerce that invades the pioneer
places of the earth. Should the already weakened, ill-fed and
scurvy-threatened garrison break into those supplies, all the labor
and patience and mothering of this courageous woman would be
useless, for after a bean diet in the Northern latitudes, whiskey
is deadly to brain and body, and the victim maddens or dies.
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