One day Bob called to him to come outside and look at something. No new snow had fallen for several days, and the sun was bright and gave the illusion of warmth. Barry pulled on a heavy cape and followed Bob out. There was a snow sculpture standing in the center of the courtyard between the new dorms. It was a male figure, eight feet tall, nude, its legs fused into a base that was also a pedestal. In one hand the figure carried a club, or perhaps a torch, and the other hand swung at its side. The feeling of motion, of life, had been captured. It was a man on his way to somewhere else, striding along, not to be stopped.

"Mark?" Barry asked.

"Who else?"

Barry approached it slowly; there were others looking at it also, mostly children. A few adults were there, and others came out until there was a crowd about the statue. A small girl stared, then turned and began to roll a snowball. She threw it at the figure. Barry caught her arm before she could throw again.

"Don't do that," he said.

She looked at him blankly, looking at the figure even more blankly, and started to inch away. He released her, and she darted back through the people. Her sisters ran to her. They touched each other as if to reassure themselves that all was well.

"What is it?" one of them asked, unable to see over the heads of the people between her and the statue.

"Just snow," the little girl answered. "It's just snow."

Barry stared at her. She was about seven, he thought. He caught her again, and this time lifted her so she could see. "Tell me what that is," he said.

She wriggled to get loose. "Snow," she said. "It's snow."

"It's a man," he said sharply.

She looked at him in bewilderment and glanced at the figure again. Then she shook her head. One by one he held other small children up to see. All they saw was snow.

Barry and his brothers talked to their younger brothers about it later that day, and the younger doctors were impatient at what was clearly, to them, a trifle.

"So the younger children can't see that it's supposed to be the figure of a man. What does it matter?" Andrew asked.

"I don't know," Barry said slowly. And he didn't know why it was important, only that it was.

During the afternoon the sun melted the snow a bit, and overnight it froze solid once more. By morning when the sun hit the statue, it was blinding. Barry went out to look at it several times that day. That night someone, or a group, went out and toppled it and stamped it into the ground.