He was remembering, for no reason, a winter when he was nine. The Lode had frozen from bank to bank, black ice so clear you could see the weed beneath it, and the old man—not old then, only fifty-odd and vigorous, in a caped greatcoat—had taken him down to it with a pair of Dutch skates and strapped them to his boots with his own hands. He had held Ivo by both wrists and skated backward, towing him, across the whole width of the drain and back, while Ivo shrieked and the old man roared at him to bend his knees, bend them, a Ferrand doesn't fall like a sack of meal. Ivo had fallen like a sack of meal eleven times that afternoon. The old man had picked him up eleven times.
He came round the side of the bed and sat down in Pask's chair.
"I've eaten," he said. His voice came out rough. "Last night at the inn. Mutton. It was bad mutton." He was silent. "She told you I had. She wanted you to know she lied. I thought you should hear it was true."
The candles burned. Through the curtains came the faint, far sound of the tenor bell, which was tolling again, as it would every hour until the funeral.
"You might have written," Ivo said. "Once. In eleven years. I might have written. I know that. I didn't think you'd read it." He looked at the folded hands. "And now you've done this. Married me to your secretary. You managing old devil."
After a while he became aware that someone was standing in the doorway, and turned.
She had taken off the bonnet. Without it she looked younger, and more tired; her dark hair was pinned up plainly, and coming down a little at one side. She held the doorframe as if she needed it.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'll go."
"No. Come in. He was yours more than mine, these last years."
She came and stood at the other side of the bed. For a while neither of them spoke.
"He talked about you," she said at last. "Not often. Not to me, at first. But when the engine was being built he used to say you would have known how to set the beam, that you had a head for levels. And once when there was a piece in the paper about the Highland roads he had me read it three times. Then he said the Scotch did not deserve you, and went to sleep."