“Couldn't you tell by the way he talked?”
“What was it that made his dyin' so awful?”
“No,” said the doctor, “that he'd die before he could tell me something that he was tryin' to tell me.”
“Goodness! Was he tryin' to tell you somethin' all night?”
The woman sat for a moment in silence, her fat hands clasped together in her lap, the muscles of her face tense, her eyes fixed on the mountain, then she spoke. “Did he ever tell you?”
“N,” replied the doctor, “it was not anything he'd done.”
“I did not understand it,” replied the doctor.
“Good Lord!” she said, “a man on his deathbed a-trying all night to tell you somethin' an' then you didn't understand it!”
“No, I didn't understand it,” said the doctor. “He kept whisperin'--'He's comin,' he's comin'. He's to have my things,' an' I kept askin' him if he meant some of his kin folks, but he always shook his head. I never saw a man in such mortal agony to speak. Finally just before he died, he got it out. He said, 'The Teacher.' Now, what did he mean?”
“I know who he meant,” replied the woman, “he meant the School-teacher.”
“Why, the new School-teacher, the one that come last night. He was goin' to stay with Nicholas.”
The horse had now finished with his breakfast, the doctor got up.
“I didn't know you had a Schoolteacher,” he said.
He went over to the horse, put the bit into its mouth, took up his leather saddle-hags and thrust his foot into the stirrup.
“See here, Sally,” he said, “old Nicholas wanted me to get up at his funeral and say that he had left everything to the 'Teacher.' I suppose he meant this new School-teacher. I told him I'd see to it. Now, I don't want to come back here; couldn't you do it? The country will likely gather up and bury him this afternoon.”
He swung up into the saddle and hooked the bridle rein over his crooked arm.
“Yes, I'll do that,” said the woman. The doctor clucked to his horse, and disappeared down the little valley; his arm rising and falling with the regular motion of the swinging walk.
The woman remained standing in the road, her hands spread out on her hips. She had suddenly remembered that the guest of last night had said that Nicholas Parks was going away!
At noon the miller and her little girl set out up the mountain.