The coroner’s voice broke in upon a deep murmur of assent.  “I presume,
Mr. Cary, that you bring no accusation against Mr. Rand?”

Fairfax Cary looked from under the hand with which, as he sat, he shaded his brow.  “I have, here and now, no sufficient proof whereon to base accusation of any man.  I will only say that I shall seek such proof.”

A little longer, and the proceedings were over.  The crowd dispersed, unsatisfied, hungry for further details and hazardous of solutions.  The better class went home, but others hung long about the Court House yard, reading the notices pasted upon the Court House doors, the “WHEREAS upon the seventh day of September and on the river road where it is crossed by Indian Run”—­commenting upon the rewards offered, relating this or that story of the Greenwood Carys, and recalling every murder in Albemarle since the Revolution.  “Dole was shot down like that, three years ago, in North Garden—­but then, Fitch was suspected from the first.  Fitch had been heard to swear he’d do it, and they knew, too, it was his gun, and a child had seen him come and go.  Lewis Rand was for the State.  Don’t you remember the speech he made?  No; Tom Mocket made it, but Mr. Rand wrote it!  Either way it hung Fitch.  Curious, wasn’t it, that passage between Mr. Rand and Fairfax Cary?  D’ye suppose he thought—­d’ye suppose Fairfax Cary thought—­”

“It isn’t what a man thinks,” stated a surly farmer.  “It’s what a man can prove.”

“Well, he couldn’t prove that if he tried till doomsday!” cried another.  “That’s not Lewis Rand’s trade!”

“You’re right there, Jim,” assented the group.  “WHEREAS upon the seventh day of September and on the river road where it is crossed by Indian Run—­”

Upon a September afternoon, clear and fair, full of the ripeness and strength of the year, the body of Ludwell Cary was given back to the earth.  There was a service at Saint Anne’s, after which, carried by faithful slaves and followed by high and low of the county, he was borne to the Cary burial-ground at Greenwood.  It crowned a low hill at no great distance from the oaks about the house—­a place of peace and quietness, with bird-haunted trees and a tangle of old flowers.  Ludwell Cary was laid beside Fauquier Cary, the “Dust to dust” was spoken, and the grave filled in.  All mourned who heard the falling earth, and the negroes wailed aloud, but Fairfax Cary stood like a rock.  It was over.  The throng melted away, leaving only the house servants, two or three old and privileged friends, and the living Cary.  The last spoke to the first, thanked them, and sent them away; then, addressing himself to the two Churchills and the old minister, asked that he be left alone.  They went, Major Edward turning at once, the others following more slowly He watched them below the hill-top, then sat down beside the grave that was so raw and red for all the masking flowers.