"My father is dead," Alex said, with ponderous solemnity. "It is a great grief, of course; but I trust I shall be properly resigned. His age rendered such an event not altogether unexpected."
Dr. Lavendar could not speak; but as the stage-driver began to gather up his reins from the steaming backs of his horses, he said, brokenly: "Wait—wait. Tell me about it, Alex; your father and I have been friends all our lives." Alex told him briefly: He had just had a despatch; his father had died that morning; he had been less well for a fortnight. "I had a letter from him this morning," Alex said, "in which he referred to his health—"
"So had I—so had I."
"I cannot get back with the body for six days—three to go, three to come," Alex said, "but I will be obliged if you will arrange for the obsequies next Thursday."
"Yes, yes. I will make any arrangements for you," Dr. Lavendar said. He took out his big red silk pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose with a trembling flourish. "We were boys together; your father was the big boy, you know; I was the youngster. But we were great friends. Alex, I am afraid my own grief has made me forgetful of yours; but you have had a loss, my boy—a great loss."
"Very much so—very much so," Alex agreed, with a proper sigh, and pulled up the window of the stage, then lowered it abruptly: "Oh, Dr. Lavendar, are you going on as far up as—as my house?"
"As your house?" Dr. Lavendar repeated. "Oh—oh yes; I didn't understand. Yes, I am."
"Would it inconvenience you," Alex said, "to stop there? I am going to ask Mr. Ezra Barkley to come up at once and put seals on various things. I am the sole executor, as well as the heir, of course; but I sha'n't be able to attend to things for a week; and the forms of law must be observed. If you could be on hand when Barkley is there—not that I do not trust him."
Dr. Lavendar stared at him blankly; for an intelligent man, Alex was sometimes a great fool. But he only nodded gravely, and said he would stop at the house and wait for Mr. Ezra; Alex signed to the driver, and the stage went rolling noiselessly on into the storm. When, at the foot of the hill, Alex glanced back through the little oblong of bubbly glass in the leather curtain of the coach, he saw Dr. Lavendar's buggy standing motionless where he had passed it on the bridge; then the snow hid it.
Under the bridge the creek ran swiftly between edges of ice that here and there had caught a dipping branch and held it prisoner, or had spread in agate curves—snow white, clear black, faint white again—around a stone in mid-stream. On the black current, silent except for a murmurous rush of bubbles under the ice, the snowflakes melted instantly, myriads of them—hurrying, hurrying, hurrying; then, as they touched the water, gone. Dr. Lavendar, in the buggy, sat looking down at them: