g approbation for the surprise he has arranged.

Bobby went in with the others. Automatically through the dim light he
catalogued remembered objects, all intimate to his grandfather, each
oddly entangled in his mind with his dislike of the old man. The iron
bed; the chest of drawers, scratched and with broken handles; the closed
colonial desk; the miserly rag carpet--all seemed mutely asking, as
Bobby did, why their owner had deserted them the other night and
delivered himself to the ghostly mystery of the old bedroom.

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