in little groups on the sidewalk near the house, looking and pointing, drawn close together, talking in low tones.  At last even a policeman appeared, walking deliberately, casting the shadow of his huge stomach upon the fence that was about the vacant lot.  He frowned upon the children, ordering them away.  But suddenly he discovered an acquaintance, the driver of an express-wagon that had just driven up with an enormous anchor of violets.  He paused, exclaiming: 

“Why, hello, Connors!”

“Why, hello, Mister Brodhead!”

Then a long conversation was begun, the policeman standing on the curbstone, one foot resting upon the hub of a wheel, the expressman leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, twirling his whip between his hands.  The expressman told some sort of story, pointing with his elbow toward the house, but the other was incredulous, gravely shaking his head, putting his chin in the air, and closing his eyes.

Inside the house itself there was a hushed and subdued bustling that centred about a particular room.  The undertaker’s assistants and the barber called in low voices through the halls for basins of water and towels.  There was a search for the Old Gentleman’s best clothes and his clean linen; bureau drawers were opened and shut, closet doors softly closed.  Relatives and friends called and departed or stayed to help.  A vague murmur arose, a mingled sound of whispers and light foot-steps, the rustle of silks, and the noise of stifled weeping, and then at last silence, night, solitude, a single gas-jet burning, and Vandover was left alone.

The suddenness of the thing had stunned and dizzied him, and he had gone through with all the various affairs of the day wondering at his calmness and fortitude.  Toward eleven o’clock, however, after the suppressed excitement of the last hours, as he was going to bed, the sense of his grief and loss came upon him all of a sudden, with their real force for the first time, and he threw himself upon the bed face downward, weeping and groaning.  During the rest of the night pictures of his father returned to him as he had seen him upon different occasions, particularly three such pictures came and went through his mind.

In one the Old Gentleman stood in that very room, with the decanter in his hand, asking him kindly if he felt very bad; in another he was on the pier with his handkerchief tied to his cane, waving it after Vandover as though spelling out a signal to him across the water.  But in a third, he was in the smoking-room, fallen into the leather chair, his arm resting on the table and his head bowed upon it.