The shoemaker was a frugal chap,--the evidence discloses, I think, that he had been an unusually frugal lover,--and he had saved some money, which, it seems, he was determined not to spend on his fair one until he could develop some legal claim to her, but he treated her handsomely then, according to his taste and ability. He bought a house in another and better part of town, and he furnished it in a way that dazzled the eyes of those children who had been accustomed to bare floors and had never known the glories of golden oak and blue and yellow and red plush, ingrain carpets, and chenille hangings; and he clothed them all and sent them to school, and finally they all took his name, and, I think, forgot poor Rheinhold altogether. And so, in their new-found prosperity, they vanished out of my sight, and I heard of them no more for years. Then one day Maria’s little daughter, grown into a tall young girl by that time, came to tell me that her mother was dead. Maria had started down town with her husband, on Christmas Eve, to buy the gifts for her children, and in the heavy snow that was falling a defective sidewalk was hidden, and Maria was thrown to the ground and so hurt that she died. Her last words to her daughter had been, so the girl said, “See Mr. Whitlock; he’ll do what should be done.” Her heirs had a clear case against the city, but I had just been elected mayor that autumn and could not prosecute such a claim. Another lawyer did so, and got damages for the children, and even for the husband, and with these funds in a trust company’s keeping the shoemaker educated all the children. And he wore about his hat the thickest hand of heavy crêpe that I ever saw.