“Why do you ask?  He has shown how good a friend he is.”

“He has always made me think,” Bobby said, “that he had your love.  You’re sure he guessed that you cared for me?”

In that place, at that moment, there was a tragic colour to her coquetry.

“I think every one must have guessed it except you, Bobby.”

He raised her head and touched her lips.  Her lips were as cold as the caresses of the drifting snowflakes.

“We must go on,” she sighed.

In his memory the chill of her kiss was bitter.  In the forest they could speak no more of love.

But Bobby, hand in hand with her as they hurried after the others, received a new strength.  He saw as a condition to their happiness the unveiling of the mystery at the Cedars.  He gathered his courage for that task.  He would not give way even before the memory of all that he had experienced, even before the return of his grandfather, even before the revelation toward which they walked.  And side by side with his determination grew shame for his former weakness.  It was comforting to realize that the causes for his weakness and his strength were identical.

The subdued murmur of voices reached them.  They saw among the indistinct masses of the trees restless patches of black.  Katherine stumbled against one of the fallen stones.  They stood with the others in the burial ground, close to the mound that had been made that day.

“They haven’t begun,” Bobby whispered.

She freed her hand.

A white flame sprang across the mound.  The trees from formless masses took on individual shapes.  A row of cypresses on which the light gleamed were like sombre sentinels, guarding the dead.  The snow patches, clustered on their branches, were like funeral decorations pointing their morbid function.  The light gave the overturned stones an illusion of striving to struggle from their white imprisonment.  Robinson swung his lamp back to the mound.

“The snow isn’t heavy,” he said, “and the ground isn’t frozen.  It oughtn’t to take long.”

Silas Blackburn commenced to shake.

“It’s a desecration of the dead.”

“We have to know,” Robinson said, “who is buried in that grave.”

With a spade Jenkins scraped the snow from the mound.  Rawlins joined him.  They commenced to throw to one side, staining the white carpet, spadesful of moist, yellow earth.  Their labour was rapid.  Silas Blackburn watched with an unconquerable fascination.  He continued to shake.

“I’m too cold.  I’ll never be warm again,” he whined.  “If anything happens to me, Bobby, try to forget I’ve been hard, and don’t let them bury me.  Suppose I should be buried alive?”

“Suppose,” Paredes said, “you were buried alive to-day?”

He turned to Bobby and Katherine.

“That also is possible.  You remember the old theories that have never been disproved of the disintegration of matter into its atoms, of its passage through solid substances, of its reforming in a far place?  I wouldn’t have to ask an East Indian that.”