that last day. She came twice to see me. I suppose she wanted to tell me something," and, "What strikes me as funny is that nobody ever suspected it. There wasn't any talk about them at all. It was like a flash out of the blue." It was impossible to silence her tongue. Even during the service she whispered to Jason, "Don't she look pure and sweet? You just can't believe that things like this happen. Life is a funny thing, I always say. It was just like a flash out of the blue."
And "pie-faced" Elmer was there too, all in dingy black. He read the service, looking like the Jewish god of vengeance. He only spoke once or twice in a ghoulish whisper, but his eyes were eloquent. They said, "You see the wages of sin . . ." and, "This is what comes of Philip abandoning God."
Once the service was interrupted when little Philip, wakened by the singing of Crossing the Bar by the hired quartet, stirred in his crib and began to cry.
Naomi was buried in the dress of figured foulard. Mabelle observed that in the coffin it looked all right. Naomi, she said, looked so young and so natural.
The Mills began once more to pound and roar. The flames of the furnaces again filled all the night sky with a rosy glow. The last miserable remnants of the strikers drifted away and the tent village disappeared, leaving only a vacant lot, grassless and muddy with the turn of winter. The strike and the slaughter in the park of Shane's Castle, even the tragedy of Naomi and the Reverend Castor, were at last worn to shreds as
