. 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:

"It's deep enough!"

Another voice droned. It was soft and unctuous. It seemed to take a
pleasure in the terrible words it loosed to stray eternally through the
decaying forest.

Bobby glanced at bent stones, strangled by the underbrush; at other
slabs, cracked and brown, which lay prone, half covered by creeping
vines. The tones of the clergyman were no longer revolting in his ears.
He scarcely heard them. He imagined a fantasy. He pictured the
inhabitants of these forgotten, narrow houses straying to the great
dwelling where they had lived, punishing this one, bringing him to suffer
with them the degradation of their neglect. So Robinson became less
important in his mind. Through such fancies the ordeal was made bearable.

A wind sprang up, rattling through the trees and disturbing the vines on
the fallen stones. Later, he thought, it would snow, and he shivered for
those left helpless to sleep in the sad forest.

The dark-clothed men strained at ropes now. They glanced at Katherine
and Bobby as at those most to be impressed by their skill. They lowered
Silas Blackburn's grimly shaped casing into the sorrel pit. It passed
from Bobby's sight. The two roughly dressed labourers came from the
thicket where they had hidden, and with their spades approached the
grave. The sound from whose imminence Bobby had shrunk rattled in his
ears