This tide of opprobrium would go higher but for the brave efforts of a single woman.  She visits the political boss.

“You killed my husband!” she says deliberately.

The leader protests.

“Now you let these hyenas bark every day at his grave.  And he has no grave!”

The woman grows white.  The leader expostulates, The woman regains her anger.

“He has no grave, and yet your hyenas are barking, and barking.  Do you think I do not read it?  Do you think I intend to endure it?”

The leader makes his peace.

As a result there is a return to the question in the party press.  Long eulogies of Lockwin appear.  There is a movement for a monument.  The memory of the dead man’s oratory stirs the community.  Several prominent citizens subscribe—­when they learn that their subscriptions, however meager, will be made noteworthy from a source where money is not highly valued.  The poor on every side touch the widow’s heart with their sincere and generous offerings.

The philosophic discuss the character of Esther Lockwin.

“Her troubles have brought her out.  These cold women are slow to strike fire, but I admire them,” says the first philosopher.

“Don’t you think our American widows make too much ado?” asks the second philosopher.

“They at least do not ascend the burning pyre of their dead husbands.”

“To be sure.  That’s so.  I don’t know but I like Esther Lockwin the better.  I never knew a man to lose so much as Lockwin did by dying.”

“She declares his death was due to the little boy’s death.”

“Odd thing, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but he was a beautiful child.  What was his name, now?”

“It was Lockwin’s name—­let me see—­David.”

“Oh, yes, Davy, they called him.”

“Well, she has erected the prettiest sarcophagus in the whole cemetery for Davy.  I tell you Esther Lockwin is a magnificent woman.”

“She would have more critics, though, if she were not Wandrell’s only daughter.”

“Wandrell’s only daughter!  You don’t tell me so!  Ah, yes, yes!  That accounts for it.”

So, while the philosophers account for it, Esther Lockwin goes on with the black business of life.  Every week she waits impatiently for news from Corkey.  Every week he gives notice that he has found nothing.

“When spring comes, I’ll find that yawl,” he promises.  He knows he can do that much with time.

How often has Esther Lockwin thrown herself on a couch, weeping and moaning as if her body would not hold her rebellious heart—­as when Corkey left her in those black and earliest days of the great tempest of woe!

“It is marvelous that it is held to be dishonorable to die, and honorable to live,” she cries.

“Oh, David, David, come back! come back! so noble, so good, so great!  You who loved little Davy so!  You who kissed his blessed little feet!  Oh, my own! my husband!”