One day Nathalie led the boys to a terrace, a few feet back of a brown-shingled cottage across the road from Peckett’s, and which stood on a lower spur of Garnet Mountain, facing the Franconia Range. Here, on this grassy ridge, gently sloping down to a green meadow below, skirted by a tree-fringed road edging the rocky pasture-land which gradually merged into the lower slopes of the range, she pointed out King Lafayette, and his lower mate, Lincoln, with his two slides. The Sleeping Infant, lying between the latter and Garfield’s sharply defined peak, was immediately heralded by the little maid, Sheila, as the long-lost infant, which some kind-hearted fairy some day, with her magic wand, would awaken. The Twins, and the huge Sleeping Giant, and some of the lower peaks, all came in for a share in the mystic doings of the little girl’s fanciful imagination.

The atmosphere was so translucent that each shaggy crest, pointed dome, and spire of the range, sharply defined against the sapphire-blue of the sky, stood forth with a strange lucidity, seemingly so near that one had the inclination to put forth a hand to touch them.

Lafayette’s craggy foretop, standing up from the deep green-verdured gorge that cleft one side of it, was startlingly like some huge elephant’s head, with a mouse-colored, wrinkly and baggy-skinned trunk. The boys accentuated the resemblance by locating two big rocks, which, they declared, were the beady eyes of the animal, while Sheila insisted she could see the eyes move.

As they rested on the ledge of a little circling wall of cobble-stones, evidently the unfinished foundation of a stone tower, Nathalie told how Lincoln’s rounded dome had been named in honor of a great American named Abraham Lincoln. “Some people used to call him ‘Old Abe,’ or ‘Father Abraham,’ not from any disrespect,” continued the girl, “but because he was so kindly in his nature, his heart so filled with love for mankind, that it was a title of honor, and showed the love of the people for him.”

“Ain’t he the gink that got to be President of the United States, and made the darkies free?” inquired Danny eagerly.

Nathalie nodded, and then led the boy on to tell how Lincoln, from a long-legged, ungainly pioneer youth, brought up in a log cabin in the wilds of Indiana, ended his career as the hero of the greatest republic in the world. The little newsie told his story importantly, proud to think that he had remembered these odd bits of knowledge from the little schooling he had received. And what he didn’t remember Nathalie did, dwelling at length on the part this leader of men took in freeing the slaves, and what slavery meant to the negroes of the South.

As the little group listened with wide-eyed interest, the girl suddenly cried, “Oh, children! think what it would mean to you if you were not allowed to move about as you pleased, but were forced to do what you did not want to do, although you might be tired and hungry, and were driven about like cattle, and lashed if you disobeyed your master!”

She then explained that all men were born free and equal, and that God never intended that any man should be a bond-servant to his fellow-men. “Every one,” she emphasized, “has the right to enjoy the beautiful things of life without being subjected to cruel treatment, and forced to hard labor, as the slaves had been, just because their skin was black instead of white.

“But there is another kind of slavery.” said Nathalie earnestly, “which, although it may not mean the slavery of the body, like that of the negroes on a plantation, is the slavery of the will. That is, a man may not be lashed on his back, but his will is made subject to another man’s will, and he has to obey and direct his life the way this man says, whether he wants to or not. All over the world, for centuries, the people of different nations have been forced to obey the will of one man, that is, the ruler, or the king, of the nation to which they belonged. The peoples of the world have not been free; they have not had the right, or the liberty, to do as they thought or felt.”

She then tried to make the children understand that liberty was something as high and wide, and as vast, as the beautiful mountains which rose before them. “It is like the air,” she said, “or the atmosphere, which stretches about you on every side, and around the great earth like a gray blanket. It is so big it can’t be seen, like the mountains, or measured, and yet it can be felt. For if you were shut up in a box without any air, or atmosphere to breathe into your lungs, you would die. So liberty, God’s special gift, is so dear and sweet to man, that without it he can’t grow or expand, for he is like a man shut up in a box without air. He is like a little Tom Thumb, for he can only grow just so high.”

Nathalie now interested the children in the story of the Pilgrims, the pioneers of liberty in America, telling how, because they were not allowed to have liberty under the rule of the English king, they came to this new world and sought to worship God as they deemed right. In doing this, she explained, they not only founded a colony where they had the right to worship God as their conscience dictated, but they made religious freedom possible for the people who came after them. By the signing of the Compact in the cabin of the Mayflower, they gave this nation democratic liberty, by giving every man the right to express his thoughts and feelings, thus giving him a say as to how the people should be ruled, which meant a government for and by the people.

Nathalie now told of the patriots, and how, in the War of the Revolution, they fought the mother-country, England, in order to maintain the liberty given them by the founders of the nation. “By uniting the thirteen colonies into one, they not only added unity to justice and liberty, but gave us the United States of America.

“These lovers of liberty also organized a society, in New York, which became known as the Sons of Liberty, all the members determined to defend with their lives the liberty and principles given them by their forefathers. As liberty means the right to express our thoughts and feelings, it also means that these thoughts and feelings must be good and pure, the best within us,” added the girl with sudden gravity. “And these Sons of Liberty were so called not only because they fought for liberty, but because they gave of their best to mankind.”

Danny added another link to this story of liberty by telling about the Declaration of Independence, and how the Liberty Bell was rung from the old State House in Philadelphia, so that every one should know that a new nation had been born. The ride of Paul Revere was described with spirited impressiveness by the boy, as well as what had occurred on Lexington common, and the famous battle by the old North Bridge at Concord.

Whereupon Nathalie pointed out Mount Washington’s cone-tipped crest, majestically rising above a wreath of silver-gray clouds, and explained that, although the Indians had named it Agiochook, in later years the white people had named it Mount Washington, in honor of the great man Danny had been telling about.

After dwelling upon Washington’s magnificent character, and recalling little incidents from his life, Nathalie said that, like the great mountain that towered so far above its fellows, so George Washington, the first President of this great nation, was known to civilization as one of the greatest men in the world, because he had given of his best to help his fellow-men, and proved that he was a true Son of Liberty.

Jefferson Mountain, its crest rising in low humility near Washington’s greater height; Adams, whose stony front stood forth in rugged grandeur on the left; and Madison, Monroe, Franklin, Clay, and Webster, as well as other peaks, were pointed out to the children, each one named for some great American, who had proved his right to be known as a Son of Liberty. To be sure, some of the peaks were shrouded in a veil of mystical haze, while others were but dimly discerned, as they peeped between the gaps made by their nearer mates, but each and every one served to illustrate in whose honor it had been named, and why he was a lover of what every one loved—liberty.

Nathalie now drew the children’s attention to Mount Lafayette, and said that this peak had also been named in honor of a great man, also a Son of Liberty, although he was not an American. The children had heard the name of Lafayette mentioned so often in connection with the present war, that they listened with greedy avidity as the girl told about this “Boy of Versailles,” as some one had called him, when, as the young Marquis de Lafayette,—a mere boy,—he used to lead the revels at that famous French palace in helping the girl queen, Marie Antoinette, make merry at her garden parties, when her boy husband was too busy in his workshop, taking some old clock apart, to entertain his guests at court.

She told how the little marquis loved to walk behind the brave soldiers of the day, the one ambition of his life being his longing to be a soldier. She told, too, of his life in the lonely castle among the southern mountains of France, where his only companions were governesses and masters, all intent upon drilling him to dance, to bow with courtly grace, to pick up a lady’s handkerchief, and other accomplishments of the court. After leaving the College du Plessis, where his education as a courtier was completed, he returned to his estate, now the heir to great wealth, where he used to spend his time making friends with the peasants,—the people who lived on his lands,—thus becoming acquainted with their mode of life. In this way he learned the need of liberty, the liberty that gave people the right to think and feel, and to express their thoughts and feelings, and the great need that the people of the nations in the world should have a voice in their own government, and thus learn to govern themselves.

Nathalie then told how, when the patriots of America began to fight against King George in order to gain their rights, that the young nobleman, now tall and slender, with reddish hair and bright eyes, heard of it, and, although an officer in the French army, he determined to go to America and help these people of the colonies to win their liberty. He had a young and lovely wife,—they had been sweethearts when children,—and yet so inspired was he to help the Americans that he left her. With a friend, the Baron de Kalb, he eluded the spies and officers of his own country, and in various disguises finally reached Spain, whence he embarked for America, and gallantly fought with the American patriots during the War of the Revolution, winning fame not only for his bravery, but for his great friendship for Washington. “Indeed,” said the girl, as she finished her recital, he was a real Son of Liberty, and it is a splendid thing to think that these two grand old mountains, facing each other in such magnificent grandeur, should now be the monuments to these two wonderful men, monuments, too, that can only perish when the mountains turn and flee away at the command of the Most High God.

“Lincoln, whose life-story you know,” Nathalie pointed to the green-wooded heights of Mount Lincoln, “also proved himself a Son of Liberty when he gave of the noblest and best that was in him to the people, in his great struggle to free the slaves. In fact,” the girl spoke a little sadly, “this great man was not only a Son of Liberty, but he was a martyr to Liberty.” And then she told how he had lost his life because of his heroic determination to do what he thought was right.

“Children,” cried the girl suddenly, facing the row of intent, eager faces regarding her, “can any of you tell me who to-day are proving themselves true Sons of Liberty?”

“The soldiers who are fighting in the trenches!” burst from Danny quickly.

Before Nathalie could assent, a thin, quavering voice burst out with the ringing cry, “Vive la Belgique! Vive la Belgique!”

“Good for you, Jean,” cried the girl, as she enthusiastically clapped her hands in approval. “It is long live Belgium. Yes, Jean, the soldiers of Belgium, of France, England, and America, too, now, are proving themselves Sons of Liberty, because they are all fighting to give liberty to the world. And brave Belgium,” patting the shoulder of the refugee, whose pale face was strangely illumined, “every man in that little country has proved that he is a Son of Liberty, when, rather than dishonor the great principles of liberty and justice, he took up arms and defended it against the Germans when they made their mad rush to Paris. They not only saved France, but every nation as well, saved it so that each man in it could fight and thus give liberty to the world. Now, children, let us cry with Jean, ‘Vive la Belgique.’”

When this cry ceased, Tony’s velvety black eyes, with a sly gleam of humor lurking in their shadows, became scarlet flames, suddenly remembering that his native land was also in the war, and, with dramatic fervor, he yelled, “Viva l’Italia!”

Danny, not to be outdone in this burst of patriotism, immediately started in with the lusty shout of, “Hurrah for the United States! Hurrah for the United States!”

Altogether it was a very patriotic little company that stood by the old stone ledge facing those blue-hazed mountains on that sunny afternoon and “yelled their heads off,” as Danny said, in honor of the Sons of Liberty, who were fighting in the trenches across the sea to give liberty to the world.

After the shouting and demonstration of the patriots had begun to wane, Nathalie put up her hand for silence, and then, in her simple way, the way that somehow always seemed to go right to the heart of every child, said very softly, “And now, children, let us show that we, too, each one of us, want to do what is right, to give of our best to make others happy. Let us show that, although we cannot go and fight in the trenches, we are still Sons of Liberty, by keeping a big, deep place in our hearts for the boys in the trenches, not only our American boys, but the boys of the Allies, every soldier of every nation who is fighting for the victory of peace and right.

“I know you all want to belong to the Sons of Liberty, that you would like to show that you are real soldiers, fighting for the right; and so, will you not bow your heads for a moment, and down in the big, deep place in your hearts, silently say a little prayer? Just ask God that He will bless the soldiers, these Sons of Liberty across the sea, who are fighting for you and me, and give them a great victory in this world’s battle for the rights of men, a victory that means happiness, love, and peace for every one in the world.”