ulness of his power. A
hundred times during that burial service the sound of a banged door and
a rasped voice sounded in my ears and the sight of a tense, hurrying
figure in a black dress and a bumpy red shawl moved before my eyes. The
thin figure was lying there now and over it, his rusty black coat tails
curving in the wind, like wings bent to trap the air, his gray eyes
misty with emotion, hovered the man whose door she had never entered
since that fateful day of Lisbeth's birth. I could not but feel that the
vision of him standing there told the story of his triumphs more grimly
than any recital.

The service began in a sharp, fine drizzle of rain, through which his
voice sang in shifting cadences, now large and full, now drooping to a
premonitory whisper with an undeniably dramatic quality. In spite of
myself the words stirred within me. As he read and spoke he laid aside
the turns of speech that had become his through years of association
with country folk. Almost he was another man.

"Man that is born of woman--"

The words reached down through the overlying structure of thought and
habit. I felt a giving and a drawing away; saw the crowd sway to his
will.

"In the midst of life we are--in death."

Again the tones woke me to a sharper sense of the scene. Tears stood in
many eyes. The people had melted at his touch. They were his. For a
while I lost myself in watching them, until again a changed intonation
drew me back to the man before us.

"We therefore commit her body to the ground--earth to earth--ashes to
ashes--dust to dust--"

My will was powerless to resist the beautifully delivered lines, to
doubt the integrity of the man who uttered them. The little lumps of wet
earth that he threw against the coffin struck against my heart with a
sense of the futility of all things. And then as suddenly, drawn by
something compellingly alive and pervading, I glanced at Jim, who stood
next to me; and catching the slant of his vision followed it to the edge
of the crowd, where, her thin dress clinging to her knees, her face
almost blue with cold, stood Lisbeth; and there was across her eyes and
mouth an expression of contempt and loathing such as I had never seen in
a girl so young. Jim was watching her intently, noting, with that
certain appraisal of his, the etched profile; and, with all an artist's
sensibility, reading life into the line of head and shoulders. What
if--the idea went through my mind with the in