The girl looked up when Courtland entered and thanked him for the
flowers with her eyes. The women huddled in the back of the room watched
him curiously and let no flicker of an eyelash pass without notice. They
were like hungry birds ready to pounce on any scrap of sentiment or
suspicion that might be dropped in their sight. The doctor came stolidly
in and went and stood beside the coffin, looking down for a minute as if
he were burning remedial incense in his soul, and then turned away with
the frank tears running down his tired, honest face. He sat down beside
Courtland. The stillness and the strangeness in the bare room were
awful. It was only bearable to look toward the peace in the small,
white, dead face; for the calm on the face of the sister cut one to the
heart.

The minister and the undertaker stepped into the room, and then it
seemed to Courtland as if One other entered also. He did not look up to
see. He merely had that sense of Another. It stayed with him and
relieved the tension in the room.

Then the voice of the minister, clear, gentle, ringing, triumphant,
stole through the room, and out into the hall, even down through the
landings, where were huddled some of the neighbors come to listen:

"And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me: Write--Blessed are the
dead which die in the Lord from henceforth ... But I would not have you
to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye
sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that
Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will
God bring with Him.... For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God: