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 together—­he and her beloved old Katie—­Were conducting her to her distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother’s side once more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.

He did not come down to dinner, and when I went up afterward I found him curiously agitated.  He said: 

“For one who does not believe in spirits I have had a most peculiar experience.  I went into the bath-room just now and closed the door.  You know how warm it always is in there, and there are no draughts.  All at once I felt a cold current of air about me.  I thought the door must be open; but it was closed.  I said, ’Jean, is this you trying to let me know you have found the others?’ Then the cold air was gone.”

I saw that the incident had made a very great impression upon him; but I don’t remember that he ever mentioned it afterward.

Next day the storm had turned into a fearful blizzard; the whole hilltop was a raging, driving mass of white.  He wrote most of the day, but stopped now and then to read some of the telegrams or letters of condolence which came flooding in.  Sometimes he walked over to the window to look out on the furious tempest.  Once, during the afternoon, he said: 

“Jean always so loved to see a storm like this, and just now at Elmira they are burying her.”

Later he read aloud some lines by Alfred Austin, which Mrs. Crane had sent him lines which he had remembered in the sorrow for Susy: