vil War veteran, for instance, who lived
"on the Mountain" and who was a reputed miser. He now told how Peter
Grimm had eked out his $8 a month pension for the past forty years and
had made it possible for him to live in comfort. A crippled woman who,
with her four children, had at one time seemed likely to become a public
charge and who had been relieved in the nick of time by a legacy, now
told the real source of that providential "legacy."
A farm boy who had yearned to study engineering and who had been helped
unexpectedly by a secret fund, revealed the name of the fund's donor.
A market gardener whose house, barns, and horses had been destroyed by
fire, proclaimed that insurance had not enabled him to make good his
loss. For he had not been insured. Peter Grimm had set him on his feet
again. And as in every other case, Grimm had imposed but one condition
upon the gift:--absolute secrecy.
These were but a few cases out of dozens that were made known within the
week after Grimm's death.
The little stone church of Grimm Manor was packed to the doors on the
day that six big awkward men with tear blotched faces bore a silent
burden up its aisle. A burden so covered with masses of fragrant
blossoms as to blot out its gruesome oblong shape. The flowers were from
Peter Grimm's own gardens, then in the riot of their June-tide glory.
And so, covered and drifted over with the glowing blooms he loved so
well, the dead man went to his burial.
In the Grimm pew, with its silver plate and high, box-like sides, sat
Frederik, Kathrien, and old Marta. The heir was as woe begone of face
and as crassly sombre of raiment as even the most captious could have
desired. The unostentatious pressure of his black bordered handkerchief
to his eyes once or twice during the service attested to a sorrow that
could not be kept wholly within stoic bounds.
Yet, oddly enough, it was Kathrien,--rather than Frederik or the frankly
blubbering old housekeeper,--on whom people's eyes most often
rested--rested and then dimmed with a haze of sympathy. The girl did not
weep. Her face was very pale. But it was set and expressionless. Save
for its big eyes it seemed a lifeless mask. The eyes alone were alive.
And never for one instant did they move from the flower banked casket
in front of the altar rail. They were tearless. But in their soft depths
lurked the awed, unbelieving horror of a little child's that is for the
first time brought face to f
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