ad called her a good woman.

Telegrams were sent to all the children. Bass wired that he was
coming, and arrived the next day. The others wired that they could not
come, but asked for details, which Jennie wrote. The Lutheran minister
was called in to say prayers and fix the time of the burial service. A
fat, smug undertaker was commissioned to arrange all the details. Some
few neighborhood friends called--those who had remained most
faithful--and on the second morning following his death the
services were held. Lester accompanied Jennie and Vesta and Bass to
the little red brick Lutheran church, and sat stolidly through the
rather dry services. He listened wearily to the long discourse on the
beauties and rewards of a future life and stirred irritably when
reference was made to a hell. Bass was rather bored, but considerate.
He looked upon his father now much as he would on any other man. Only
Jennie wept sympathetically. She saw her father in perspective, the
long years of trouble he had had, the days in which he had had to saw
wood for a living, the days in which he had lived in a factory loft,
the little shabby house they had been compelled to live in in
Thirteenth Street, the terrible days of suffering they had spent in
Lorrie Street, in Cleveland, his grief over her, his grief over Mrs.
Gerhardt, his love and care of Vesta, and finally these last days.

"Oh, he was a good man," she thought. "He meant so well." They sang
a hymn, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and then she sobbed.

Lester pulled at her arm. He was moved to the danger-line himself
by her grief. "You'll have to do better than this," he whispered. "My
God, I can't stand it. I'll have to get up and get out." Jennie
quieted a little, but the fact that the last visible ties were being
broken between her and her father was almost too much.

At the grave in the Cemetery of the Redeemer, where Lester had
immediately arranged to purchase a lot, they saw the plain coffin
lowered and the earth shoveled in. Lester looked curiously at the bare
trees, the brown dead grass, and the brown soil of the prairie turned
up at this simple graveside. There was no distinction to this burial
plot. It was commonplace and shabby, a working-man's resting-place,
but so long as he wanted it, it was all right. He studied Bass's keen,
lean face, wondering what sort of a career he was cutting out for
himself. Bass looked to him like some one who would run a cigar store
successf