It seemed to me as if the people at first almost tried to stop breathing, so intense was the feeling. Mrs. Falchion was sitting very near me, and though she had worn her veil up at first, as I uncharitably put it then, to disconcert him, she drew it rather quickly down as his reading proceeded; but, so far as I could see, she never took her eyes off his face through the whole service; and, impelled in spite of myself, I watched her closely. Though Ruth Devlin was sitting not far from her, she scarcely looked that way. Evidently the text of the sermon was not chosen that it might have some association with Phil’s death, but there was a kind of simple grandeur, and certainly cheerful stalwartness, in his interpretation and practical rendering of the text: “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? ... travelling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” A man was talking to men sensibly, directly, quietly. It was impossible to resist the wholesome eloquence of his temperament; he was a revelation of humanity: what he said had life. I said to myself, as I had before, Is it possible that this man ever did anything unmanly? After the service, James Devlin--with Ruth--came to Roscoe and myself, and asked us to lunch at his house. Roscoe hesitated, but I knew it was better for him not to walk up the hills and back again immediately after luncheon; so I accepted for us both; and Ruth gave me a grateful look. Roscoe seemed almost anxious not to be alone with Ruth--not from any cowardly feeling, but because he was perplexed by the old sense of coming catastrophe, which, indeed, poor fellow, he had some cause to feel. He and Mr. Devlin talked of Phil’s funeral and the arrangements that had been made, and during the general conversation Ruth and I dropped behind. Quite abruptly she said to me: “Who is Mrs. Falchion?” “A widow--it is said--rich, unencumbered,” I as abruptly answered. “But I suppose even widows may have pedigrees, and be conjugated in the past tense,” was the cool reply. She drew herself up a little proudly. I was greatly astonished. Here was a girl living most of her life in these mountains, having only had a few years of social life in the East, practising with considerable skill those arts of conversation so much cultivated in metropolitan drawing-rooms. But I was a very dull fellow then, and had yet to learn that women may develop in a day to wonderful things. “Well,” I said in reply, “I suppose not. But I fear I cannot answer regarding the pedigree, nor a great deal about the past, for I only met her under two years ago.” “And yet I have imagined that you knew her pretty well, and that Mr. Roscoe knew her even better--perhaps,” she said suggestively. “That is so,” I tried to say with apparent frankness, “for she lived in the South Seas with her father, and Roscoe knew her there.”