"Your father is dead."
"He was sitting in his buggy in the mountain road," another excited voice went on. "They brought him down here and carried him in."
David went into the yard and along the flag walk, and for the first time in his life entered his father's house by the wide-open front door, through which various Millerstonians were passing in and out. This was a great opportunity for Millerstown. Some one came out of the parlor, leaving the door ajar, and David saw a long dark figure lying on a low couch in the middle of the room. What there was to be known about his father's death he gathered from the conversation of those about him. He heard pitying exclamations, he felt that in a moment he would burst into cries of shock and terror. Bitterness fled, he was soft-hearted, weak, childlike. His father was gone, but there remained another person. He must find her; in her lay his refuge; she must be his stay, as he must henceforth be hers. Stumbling back through the hall toward the kitchen, he sought his mother. He was aware of the kind looks of those about him; his whole being was softened.
"Mother!" he meant to cry. "Oh, mother! mother!"
He felt her grief; he expected to find her prostrate on the old settle, or sitting by the table with her head on her arm, weeping. He would comfort her; he would be a good son to her; he truly loved her.
From the kitchen doorway he heard her voice, clear and toneless, the voice of every day. She was giving orders to the Millerstown women who had hastened in with offers of help,—to Grandmother Gaumer and Sarah Knerr and Susannah Kuhns. She indicated certain jars of canned fruit which were to be used for the funeral dinner, and planned for the setting of raised cake and the baking of "fine cake." In Cassie's plan for her life, she had prepared for this contingency; even now her iron will was not broken, nor her stern composure lost. She moved about as David had always seen her move, quiet, capable, self-centered. She shed no tear; she seemed to David to take actual pleasure in planning and contriving.
The frantic cry, already on David's lips, died silently away, his throat stiffened, he drew a long breath. For an instant he stood still in the doorway; then, with a bent and sullen head, he turned and crept back through the hall to the front stairs, which had scarcely ever been touched by his foot, and thence to his tiny room, where he knelt down by his narrow bed. How terrible was the strange figure under the black covering, with the blazing lights beating upon it, and the staring villagers stealing in to look! It seemed incredible that his father could lie still and suffer their scrutiny. He wished that he might go down and turn them out. But he did not dare to trust his voice, and besides, his mother accepted it all as though it were proper and right. Then David forgot the intruders, forgot his mother. His father was dead, of whom he had often thought unkindly, and his father was all he had in the world. He would never be able to speak to him again, never be able to lay a hand upon his shoulder as he sat reading his paper, never meet again that sudden glance of incomprehensible distress. Death worked its alchemy; now at last the poor father had his way with his son's heart.
"He was my father!" cried David. "I have no father!"
His breath choked, his heart seemed to smother him; he felt himself growing light-headed as he knelt by the low bed. He had had nothing to eat since noon; he had had since that time many things to suffer; he thought suddenly in his exhaustion that perhaps he, too, was about to die.
Presently there was a step in the hall and his heart leaped. Perhaps his mother had come, perhaps she did not wish to show her grief to these curious people. But the person outside knocked at the door and his mother would not have knocked.