The man sitting in the door did not move.
He looked out toward the south over a sea of sun washing a shore of tree tops. A vagrant breath of the afternoon moved his brown hair. He seemed not to hear the minister, not to regard the service, but to wait like one infinitely patient with the order of events.
When the preacher had finished, the miller, sitting in a chair by the window, rose.
“Just before ole Nicholas died,” she said, “he made the doctor promise to git up here at his funeral an' tell everybody that he left all his things to the Schoolteacher. The doctor couldn't come back, so he asked me to git up an' tell it for him.”
“Yes,” said the woman, “he tried all night to tell the doctor, an' he was mortally afeard that he would die before he could tell it.”
The School-teacher was now standing in the door. Beside him, and framing in his body, dust danced in the sun, making a haze of gold.
“Why did Nicholas Parks leave his possessions to you?”
He went over to the coffin, lifted the lid and began to fit it on the box. The men standing around the room came forward and took the coffin up. They carried it out of the house, their hands under the bottom of it. The preacher picked up his satchel and followed. Outside he stopped, pointed to the grave in the meadow, and spoke to the School-teacher.
“You didn't put that grave where old Nicholas wanted it. He wanted to be buried on the top of the ridge between those two trees. It was a place he had picked out. He told me so at the last quarterly meeting.”
The School-teacher lifted his face and looked at the two great hickories marking the spot on the summit of the little meadow. His eyes filled with melancholy shadows, the smile deepened and saddened about his mouth. But he did not reply.
Then he walked away to where the two children stood, some distance from the path.
The minister followed the coffin to the grave, but the School-teacher went with the two children through the meadow to the spot of green between the two hickories. He sat down there in the deep clover, the children beside him. Below came the sound of the earth on the coffin, and the high-pitched nervous voice of the minister. The School-teacher talked with the children.