fort, health, and found joy therein. Now they were being summoned to yield up their lives. In the supreme sacrifice might they not find the supreme joy?
All this was certainly written upon the face of Melnikov. Thru this thunderstorm of foes—hissing, roaring, and howling—he came smiling thru like a shaft of sunshine. Svetlanskaya means "The Lighted Way." Always for me it will be lit with the countenance of this workingman. About him there was something celestial, transcendent. Climbing up the hill, buffeted, jeered and spat upon, he was strangely like the figure of another Workingman, toiling thru another hostile multitude, up another hill—long ago.
Only this was no "Via Dolorosa." It was a "Way of Triumph," with Melnikov coming up like a conqueror. His face was wreathed in smiles. His sparkling eyes were still more sparkling, his features more radiant than ever. A hoarse voice shouted "Scoundrel! Hang him!" Melnikov only smiled. A heavy fist struck him in the cheek. He smiled again. It was the smile of one lifted above the base passions of the mob, far beyond reach of its blows and jeers. It was a smile of pity for the haters. Could Melnikov have been aware of the power in that smile? The silent conquests it made that day in the hearts of his beholders? It was a magnet drawing the hesitant and wavering, into the camp of the Revolution. At the same time it was a sword,
