All along the little path voices seemed to bear her company: the voices of her father, her grandmother, Homer's strong, tender tones, and My's uncertain voice, and each awoke a loving echo in her heart—yes, even the strident voice of her grandmother. They each and all whispered "Good-bye—Good-bye," save the little child's: that was inarticulate, and babbled but of childish love and confidence.
She made her way along the road she had trodden so many times in anguish. She reached the graveyard, and there held her last vigil by the side of My's grave.
The stars were yet in the sky—the mysterious stars of morning skies—when she rose to her feet. She went to each of the other graves that her heart held, and then came back to this one, the newest and smallest of the four. She looked down upon it with the pain of childbirth in her eyes, then up to the "mindful stars." She turned away with a prayer upon her lips—the same in which was uttered her agony in the cottage; the same prayer that had faltered from her lips in the church—not "Lord—Lord," but "My—My!"
So Myron Holder left Jamestown, and with her we leave it also. There is much yet that might be told of the place—of the strange death that befell Bing White; of the marriage of Gamaliel Deans to Liz, the bound girl; of the penance of pain that was meted out to Mrs. Deans for the evil she had wrought; of how Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were turned out of their farm by those of their children who had so pitied them whilst Homer lived; of how, after all, the old ragman found a fortune in rags, though not in the way he had dreamed of; of how the new church was built, and of how the old Holder cottage still stands, a ruin amid its garden, peopled only by sparrows; of how a new railway runs through the school playground, and banishes the buttercups by its cinders to the other side of the broken-down fence. There they run riot, having spread even up to the doorstep of the old cottage, where they cluster about the roots of the hopvines.
There have been many changes in Jamestown—great factories disfigure the margin of the lake, defile the streams with their refuse, and befoul the atmosphere with their smoke. A long row of workmen's cottages, depressingly alike in gable and window, has crowded the Black Horse Inn out of existence. Its old bricks pave the paths over which the mill-hands go to work; the last vestige of its violets has vanished.
The hearts of the Jamestown women, however, have not changed. The same merciless virtue that hounded Myron Holder pursues the poor factory girl who falters on her way. The same pointing fingers sting her soul. The same condemnation, the same cruelty, the same scorn, greet her as were meted out to Myron Holder.
In the olden days it was the vestal virgins, charged with keeping alight the fires that burned upon the altars sacred to home, that doomed the fallen gladiator to death; their inflexible gesture negatived the pleading of the upraised hand. There is no single instance given where they exercised the power of pardon vested in them. And to-day the verdict upon the fallen comes from women also; and is there any record of pardons?
But, O women, think well before you utter a harsh judgment! Your verdict is the more sacred by virtue of being pronounced upon your own sex, for woman is more nearly allied to woman than man to man. Each woman is linked to her sister women by the indissoluble bond of common pain. "For men must work and women must weep" may have its exceptions as to men who, by favoring fortune or a kindly fate, may escape their heritage of labor; but did a woman ever elude her birthright of tears?
It rests with women whether the bitter cup these unhappy ones drink be brimmed to the lip or not.
Ah, well! there are many Jamestowns, and many women therein. "By their works ye shall know them."