“Do ye know where she ever goes to?” demanded Cronk.

Lem shook his head in negation.

Crabbe dared not venture out again alone; for apprehension rose strong within him.  He knew that Scraggy had left the settlement to find their boy.  Had she come to Tarrytown for him?  The two men crouched low, and talked no more during some minutes.  Finally, Lon, bidding Lem follow him, lifted his big body, and they left the toolhouse.  The squatter led the way to the fence.  They stood there for a time watching in silence.  Two shadows appeared upon a curtain of the house before them.  A man was lifting a woman in his arms, and the downward fall of her head gave evidence of her unconsciousness.  As the front door opened, the squatter and the scowman retreated to their quarters.  When Everett Brimbecomb threw the body of Screech Owl into the cemetery, both were peering out.  They saw the man carry the figure off into the shadows, marking that he returned alone.  Neither knew that the other was Scraggy; but, with a lust for mystery and evil, they slipped out with no word.  Lon made off to view the Shellington home once more, and Lem disappeared in the direction from which Everett had come, easily following the tracks in the snow.  Coming within sight of the vault, Lem rounded it fearfully.  On the ground he saw the woman, and as he looked she rose to a sitting position.

Screech Owl was just recovering her battered senses.  She was still dazed, and had not heard the scowman’s footsteps, nor did she now hear the mutterings in his throat.  Faintly she called to Black Pussy; but, receiving no response from the cat, she crawled deeper into the shadows of the vault and tried to think.  Her fitful whining brought Lem from his hiding place.

“Be that you, Owl?” he whispered.

“Yep.  Where be the black cat?”

“I dunno.  Where ye been?  And how’d ye get here?”

Scraggy leaned back against the marble vault in exhaustion.

“I dunno.  Where be I now?”

Lem bent nearer her, shaking her arm roughly.

“Ye be in Tarrytown.  Did ye come here for the brat?”

“What brat be ye talkin’ ’bout, Lem?”

“Our’n, Screechy.  Weren’t ye here lookin’ for him?”

Through the darkness Lem could not see the crazed expression that flashed over Scraggy’s face.  She thrust her fingers in her hair and shivered.  The blow of Everett’s fist had banished all memory of the boy from her mind; but Lem lived there as vividly as in the olden days.

“We ain’t got no boy, Lem,” she said mournfully.

“Ye said we had, Screechy, and I know we have.  Now, get up out of that there snow, or ye’ll freeze.”

The scowman helped Screech Owl to her feet, and supported her back over the graves to the toolhouse.

“Ye stay here till I come for ye, Scraggy, and don’t ye dare go ’way no place.  Do ye hear?”

Screech Owl uttered an obedient assent, and Lem left her with a threat that he would beat her if she moved from the spot.  Then he crawled along the Brimbecomb fence, and saw Lon leaning against a tree, some distance down the road.