en happily she had said
good night, and he had not seen her again. The reciting of this was good
to him, for it brought the comfort of tears.

Later, when I went in again, he was writing:

"I am setting it down," he said--"everything. It is a relief to me to
write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking."

He continued writing most of the day, and at intervals during the next
day, and the next.

It was on Christmas Day that they went with Jean on her last journey.
Katie Leary, her baby nurse, had dressed her in the dainty gown which
she had worn for Clara's wedding, and they had pinned on it a pretty
buckle which her father had brought her from Bermuda, and which she had
not seen. No Greek statue was ever more classically beautiful than she
was, lying there in the great living-room, which in its brief history
had seen so much of the round of life.

They were to start with jean at about six o'clock, and a little before
that time Clemens (he was unable to make the journey) asked me what had
been her favorite music. I said that she seemed always to care most for
the Schubert Impromptu.--[Op. 142, No. 2.]--Then he said:

"Play it when they get ready to leave with her, and add the Intermezzo
for Susy and the Largo for Mrs. Clemens. When I hear the music I shall
know that they are starting. Tell them to set lanterns at the door, so I
can look down and see them go."

So I sat at the organ and began playing as they lifted and bore her
away. A soft, heavy snow was falling, and the gloom of those shortest
days was closing in. There was not the least wind or noise, the whole
world was muffled. The lanterns at the door threw their light out on the
thickly falling flakes. I remained at the organ; but the little group at
the door saw him come to the window above--the light on his white hair
as he stood mournfully gazing down, watching Jean going away from
him for the last time. I played steadily on as he had instructed, the
Impromptu, the Intermezzo from "Cavalleria," and Handel's Largo. When I
had finished I went up and found him.

"Poor little Jean," he said; "but for her it is so good to go."

In his own story of it he wrote:

From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the
road and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and
presently disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not
come back any more. The cousin she had played with when they were
babies to