She died when her daughter was ten years old. Those who had
misunderstood her and criticized her in the beginning, mourned
her deeply, sincerely, earnestly in the end, for she had triumphed
over prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and a certain form of malice.
The whole district was the better for her once hateful innovations,
and there was no one left who scoffed at David Windom for the choice
he had made of a wife.
Her death wrought a remarkable, enduring change in Windom. He became
a silent, brooding man who rarely smiled and whose heart lay up
in the little graveyard on the ridge. The gay, larksome light fled
from his eyes, his face grew stern and sometimes forbidding. She
had taken with her the one great thing she had brought into his
life: ineffable buoyancy. He no longer played, for there was no
one with whom he would play; he no longer sang, for the music had
gone out of his soul; he no longer whistled the merry tunes, for
his lips were stiff and unyielding. Only when he looked upon his
little daughter did the soft light of love well up into his eyes
and the rigid mouth grow tender.
She was like her mother. She was joyous, brave and fair to look
upon. She had the same heart of sunshine, the same heart of iron,
and the blue in her eyes was like the blue of the darkening skies.
She adored the grim, silent man who was her father, and she was
the breath of life to him.
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