16 ESSAYS IN NATIONAL IDEALISM.

and now she was white-haired and weak with age, and a
time came when she passed hence, for her work was done..
And the foreign lord himself grew a little weary, for there
were troubles in his own land, and some had said that he-
was a tyrant in a foreign land ; and thereby his heart waa
pained, for had not he spent his life for others, and surely
the labourer was worthy of Ms hire ? But the girl grew
strong, and would brook little of her father's tyranny, a,nd
she was a mother to the children of the children who came-
before her, and she was called the Mother by all; a,nd
perhaps she and her mother were after all the same. One-
day there arose murnmriiigs amongst the children as of
old, and they said that thef. oa^d**} no foreign lord to take
their revenues and school their ' minds. Still they were
subdued with a high hand and some .were cast in prison,,
or worse, for the fatlier was a patriarch of the old type and
deemed it amiss that- foe had no"t /the power of life and
death over all his subject -p.e6pfe.. But now they would not
brook his tyranny—for he himself unwittingly had taught
them that the king-days were over, and made them dream
of freedom.

All these trials were upon him, and he grew old and
weary; and the young mother (she would be mother of all
.she said, but wedded unto none) helped all the children
and taught them to love and help each other and to call
her mother ; and she left- the foreign lord and went to live
in a place apart, where the children came to her for counsel..
And when the foreign lord woiild have stopped it, she was
not there, but elsewhere ; and it seemed that she was
neither here nor there but everywhere,

* # * * # *

And this tale is yet unfinished ; but the ending is not
far away, and may be foreseen.