"I heard--and I wanted to come over," he said and her reply was simple.
"I'm obleeged ter ye. I wants ye ter look at him. He war a godly man
an' a right noble one. Somehow his face----" she spoke slowly and with
an effort, "looks like he'd done already talked with God--an' war at
rest."
At once she led him into the room where, upon the four-poster bed lay
the sheeted figure, and with a deeply reverent hand, lifted the
covering.
To Brent it seemed that he was looking into features exemplifying all
the wholesome virtues of those men who built the Republic. It was a
face of rugged strength and unassuming simplicity. Its lines bespoke
perils faced without fear and privations endured without complaint.
Here in a pocket of wilderness which the nation had forgotten survived
many others of those unaltered pioneers. But in the expression that
death had made fixed, as well as in facial pattern, Brent recognized
that simple kindliness to which courtesy had been a matter of instinct
and not of ceremony and the rude nobility of the man to whom others had
brought their tangled disputes, in all confidence, for adjustment.
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