Reluctantly Bobby’s glance went to the centre of the floor where the casket rested on trestles.  From the chest of drawers two candles, the only light, played wanly over the still figure and the ashen face.  So for the second time the living met the dead, and the law watched hopefully.

Robinson stood opposite, but he didn’t look at Silas Blackburn who could no longer accuse.  He stared instead at Bobby, and Bobby kept repeating to himself: 

“I didn’t do this thing.  I didn’t do this thing.”

And he searched the face of the dead man for a confirmation.  A chill thought, not without excuse under the circumstances and in this vague light, raced along his nerves.  Silas Blackburn had moved once since his death.  If the power to move and speak should miraculously return to him now!  In this house there appeared to be no impossibilities.  The cold control of death had been twice broken.

Katherine’s entrance swung his thoughts and released him for a moment from Robinson’s watchfulness.  He found he could turn from the wrinkled face that had fascinated him, that had seemed to question him with a calm and complete knowledge, to the lovely one that was active with a little smile of encouragement.  He was grateful for that.  It taught him that in the heavy presence of death and from the harsh trappings of mourning the magnetism of youth is unconquerable.  So in affection he found an antidote for fear.  Even Graham’s quick movement to her side couldn’t make her presence less helpful to Bobby.  He looked at his grandfather again.  He glanced at Robinson.  As in a dream he heard, the clergyman say: 

“The service will be read at the grave.”

Almost indifferently he saw the dark-clothed men sidle forward, lift a grotesquely shaped plate of metal from the floor, and fit it in place, hiding from his eyes the closed eyes of the dead man.  He nodded and stepped to the hall when Robinson tapped his arm and whispered: 

“Make way, Mr. Blackburn.”

He watched the sombre men carry their heavy burden across the hall, down the stairs, and into the dull autumn air.  He followed at the side of Katherine across the clearing and into the overgrown path.  He was aware of the others drifting behind.  Katherine slipped her hand in his.

“It is dreadful we shouldn’t feel more sorrow, more regret,” she said.  “Perhaps we never understood him.  That is dreadful, too; for no one understood him.  We are the only mourners.”

Bobby, as they threaded the path behind the stumbling bearers, found a grim justice in that also.  Because of his selfishness Silas Blackburn had lived alone.  Because of it he must go to his long rest with no other mourners than these, and their eyes were dry.

Bobby clung to Katherine’s hand.

“If I could only know!” he whispered.

She pressed his hand.  She did not reply.

Ahead the forest was scarred by a yellow wound.  The bearers set their burden down beside it, glancing at each other with relief.  Across the heap of earth Bobby saw the waiting excavation.  In his ears vibrated the memory of the harsh voice: