reat
sigh. He looked at the solemn black thing raised on trestles before
the pulpit with an emotion which he could not himself understand.
"That man 'ain't treated me well enough for me to care anything
about him," he kept urging upon himself. "He never paid any more
attention to me than a gravel-stone under his feet; there ain't any
reason why I should have cared about him, and I don't; it can't be
that I do." Yet arguing with himself in this way, he continued to
eye the casket which held his dead employer with an unyielding
grief.

Mrs. Zelotes sat like a black, draped statue at the head of the pew,
but her eyes behind her black veil were sharply observant. She
missed not one detail. She saw everything; she counted the wreaths
and bouquets on the casket, and stored in her mind, as vividly as
she might have done some old mourning-piece, the picture of the near
relatives advancing up the aisle.

Mrs. Lloyd came leaning on her nephew's arm, and there were Cynthia
Lennox and a distant cousin, an elderly widow who had been summoned
to the house of death.

Ellen sat in the body of the church, with the employes of Lloyd's,
between Abby Atkins and Maria. She glanced up when the little
company of mourners entered, then cast her eyes down again and
compressed her lips. Maria began to weep softly, pressing her
handkerchief to her eyes. Ellen's mother had begged her not to sit
with the employes, but with her and her father and grandmother in
their own pew, but the girl had refused.

"I must sit where I belong," said she.

"Maybe she thinks it would look as if she was putting on airs on
account of--" Fanny said to Andrew when Ellen had gone out.

"I guess she's right," returned Andrew.

The employes had contributed money for a great floral piece composed
of laurel and white roses, in the shape of a pillow. Mamie Brady,
who sat behind Ellen, leaned over, and in a whisper whistled into
her ear.

"Ain't it handsome?" said she. "Can you see them flowers from the
hands?"

Ellen nodded impatiently. The great green and white decoration was
in plain view from her seat, and as she looked at it she wondered if
it were a sarcasm or poetic truth beyond the scope of the givers,
the pillow of laurel and roses, emblematic of eternal peace,
presented by the hard hands of labor to dead capital.

Of course the tragic circumstances of Norman Lloyd's death increased
the curiosity of the public. Gradually the church became crowded by