It was three years before the doctor went up to Dalton again. It was on a sad errand this time. John Denby had died suddenly, and after an hour's hesitation², the doctor went up to the funeral.

 

There were no garish³ lights and shrieking⁴ violins to greet him as he passed once more up the long, familiar walk. The warm September sun touched lovingly the old brass⁵ knocker, and peeped behind the stately colonial pillars of the long veranda⁶. It gleamed for a moment on the bald heads of the somber-coated men filing slowly through the wide doorway⁷, and it tried to turn to silver the sable⁸ crape hanging at the right of the door.

 

Not until that evening, after the funeral, did the doctor have the opportunity for more than a formal word of greeting and sympathy with Burke Denby. He had been shocked in the afternoon at the changes in the young man's face; but he was more so when, at eight o'clock, he called at the house.

 

He found Burke alone in the library—the library whose every book and chair and curio spoke⁹ with the voice of the man who was gone—the man who had loved them so well.

 

Burke himself, to the doctor, looked suddenly old and worn, and infinitely¹⁰ weary of life. He did not[Pg 266] at once speak of his father. But when he did speak of him, a little later, he seemed then to want to talk of nothing else. Things that his father had done and said, his little ways, his likes and dislikes, the hours of delight they had passed together, the trips they had taken, even the tiddledywinks and Mother Goose of childhood came in for their share. On and on until far into the night he talked, and the doctor listened, with a word now and then of sympathy or

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