“So long Thy power has led me, surely still
’Twill lead me on,
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone.
And with the morn, those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since—and lost awhile.”
It was all over, “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” but as the five lads, the half-dozen now no longer, sat on the Carters’ piazza in the gathering twilight, sorrowfully talking over the events of the last three days, they felt that no one of them had made a braver fight to win the victor’s crown. And as the stars came out one by one, and smiled down on the boys as they sat there, smiled as they had so often done before, only more sadly to-night, they felt that Sam, too, was looking down upon them from above, and each one resolved, in his boyish heart, to live from day to day, so that at last he should be worthy to meet Sam once more in the happy future world.
