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Updated: June 17, 2025
The old man saw that the girl's bands were more deft than his own toil-hardened ones, and let her take the principal charge-but the hours when she was resting in her room were the dearest to him, for then he was alone with Ulrich, could read his countenance undisturbed and rejoice in gazing at every feature, which reminded him of his child's boyhood and of Flora.
The face of the sleeper was hidden from him, but so expressive was the distorted, toil-hardened hand, with the fingers fallen a little open as if in relief from a recently dropped tool, that the voice of the woman sounding in his ears merely put into words his own unspoken knowledge. "Ah, he's gone," she said. "He promised me he'd hold out if he could, but I guess he couldn't manage it."
Five years was not a very long time, but during it her English friends had forgotten her, and one who had scarcely left her side that memorable night had, though she read of the doings of his regiment now and then, sent her no word or token. A little flush crept into her cheek as, remembering certain words of his, she glanced at her reddened wrists and little toil-hardened hands.
"Sirs!" he said, simply, "somebody's got to die to get us out of dis, and it may as well be me," plunged overboard, put his toil-hardened shoulders to the boat; a struggle, a gasp, a mighty wrench, pushed it off clear; then fell, face foremost, pierced by a dozen bullets. Free at last! "Ye died to live."
But she had her dreams, in which even the poorest of us may indulge when our taskmaster in the great brickworks of this hot and heavy world is not hard by and pressing us forward with his lash. She had her dreams of what never was and never could be; of old longings, old heart-hungers, old hopes, and loves which never had come near for one moment's caress of her toil-hardened hand.
Especially when the procession came to the low houses and the poor cottages, the small dusty windows were thrown open, and sun-browned faces looked out, and toil-hardened hands greeted and waved. The forsaken, the ruined Gotzkowsky celebrated this day a splendid triumph. The jubilant voice that thus did him homage was that of the people and the voice of the people is the voice of God!
Ruth followed him and her hands closed upon the toil-hardened fist clenched at his side. "I'm sorry, Uncle," she whispered. He suddenly stared down at her. "There! I believe you be, child. But your being sorry can't help it none. The money's gone hard it come and it's hard to part with in this way." "Was it a large sum, Uncle?" "All the ready cash I had in the world. Every cent I owned.
The mother put out her hand, small and once of the shape that chirognomists call "the artistic hand," but now wrinkled, bony and toil-hardened, and rested it gently for a moment upon the mass of dark, waving hair, already well-threaded with gray, that crowned the other's head.
And these are my boys still always my boys. From the highest places of the land they turn to give me a comrade's greeting. I glory in the renown of these, but just as dear and precious to me is the warm grasp of the toil-hardened hand and the smile which beams upon me from the rugged face of the very humblest of "the boys who wore the gray."
Work-worn, toil-hardened mountaineer mothers, whose narrow world denied them so many of the finer thoughts and things, came to counsel with this childless woman, and to learn from her a little of the art of contentment and happiness.
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