were scarcely distinguishable, and there was one spot where Mother
Marshall's tears had washed some of the grime away into deeper stains
about it. It was only on days when Father was off to town on errands
that she allowed herself the momentary weakness of tears.

So she had stood in former years looking out into the dusk for her son
to come whistling home from school. So she had stood the day the awful
news of his fiery death had come, while Father sat in his rush-bottomed
chair and groaned. She had laid her cheek against that old felt hat and
comforted herself with the thought of her boy, her splendid boy, who had
lived his short life so intensely and wonderfully. When she felt that
old scratchy felt against her cheek it somehow brought back the memory
of his strong young shoulder, where she used to lay her head sometimes
when she felt tired and he would fold her in his arms and brush her
forehead with his lips and pat her shoulder. The neighbors sometimes
wondered why she kept that old felt hat hanging there, just as when
Stephen was alive among them, but Mother Marshall never said anything
about it; she just kept it there, and it comforted her to feel it; one
of those little homely, tangible things that our poor souls have to
tether to sometimes when we lose the vision and get faint-hearted.
Mother Marshall wasn't morbid one bit. She always looked on the bright
side of everything; and she had had much joy in her son as he was
growing up. She had seen him strong of body, strong of soul, keen of
mind. He had won the scholarship of the whole Northwest to the big
Eastern university. It had been hard to pack him up and have him go away
so far, where she couldn't hope to see him soon, where she couldn't
listen for his whistle coming home at night, where he couldn't even come
back for Sunday and sit in the old pew in church with them. But those
things had to come. It was the only way he could grow and fulfil his
part of God's plan. And so she put away her tears till he was gone, and