“That’s what I meant,” Paredes whispered.

Graham moved back.

“Good God!”

Robinson stared.  The fear had found him, too.

Doctor Groom touched Blackburn’s shoulder tentatively.

“What’s the matter with the back of your neck?”

Blackburn drew fearfully away.  He raised his hand and fumbled at the top of his collar.  He held his fingers to the firelight.

“Why,” he said blankly, “I been bleeding back there.”

To an extent the doctor controlled himself.

“Sit down here, Silas Blackburn,” he said.  “I want to get the lamplight on your head.”

“I ain’t badly hurt?” Blackburn whined.

“I don’t know,” the doctor answered.  “Heaven knows.”

Blackburn sat down.  The light shone full on the stained collar and the dark patch of hair at the base of the brain.  Doctor Groom examined the wound minutely.  He straightened.  He spoke unsteadily: 

“It is a healed wound.  It was made by something sharp.”

Robinson thrust his hands in his pockets.

“You’re getting beyond my depths, Doctor.  Bring him up to the old bedroom.  I want him to see that pillow.”

But Blackburn cowered in his chair.

“I won’t go to that room again.  They don’t want me there.  I’ll have work started in the cemetery to-morrow.”

“Mr. Blackburn,” Robinson said, “the man we buried in the cemetery to-day, the man these members of your family identify as yourself, died of just such a wound as the doctor says has healed in your head.”

Blackburn cowered farther in his chair.

“You’re making fun of me,” he whimpered.  “You’re trying to scare an old man.”

“No,” Robinson said.  “How was that wound made?”

The crouched figure wagged its head from side to side.

“I don’t know.  Nothing’s touched me there.  I remember I had a headache when I woke up.  Why doesn’t Groom tell me why I slept so long?”

“I only know,” Groom rumbled, “that the wound I examined upstairs must have caused instant death.”

Paredes whispered to him.  The doctor nodded reluctantly.

“What do you mean?” Blackburn cried.  “You trying to tell me I can’t stay with you?”

He pointed to Paredes.

“That’s what he said—­that I might have to go back, but I never heard of such a thing.  I’m all right.  My neck doesn’t hurt.  I’m alive.  I tell you I’m alive.  I’ll teach you—­”

Rawlins returned from the telephone.

“His story’s straight,” he said in his crisp manner.  “I’ve been talking to Waters himself.  Says Mr. Blackburn turned up about three-thirty, looking queer and acting queer.  Wouldn’t shake hands, just as he says.  He went to the spare room and slept practically all the time until this afternoon.  No food.  Waters couldn’t rouse him.  Mr. Blackburn wouldn’t answer at all or else seemed half asleep.  He’d made up his mind to call in a doctor this afternoon.  Then Mr. Blackburn seemed all right again, and started home.”