. The yellow earth cut across the stormy twilight of the cemetery and
scattered in the trench. After a time the response lost its metallic
petulance.

Katherine pulled at Bobby's hand. He started and glanced up. One of the
black-clothed men was speaking to him with a professional gentleness:

"You needn't wait, Mr. Blackburn. Everything is finished."

He saw now that Robinson stood across the grave still staring at him.
The professional mourner smiled sympathetically and moved away.
Katherine, Robinson, the two grave diggers, and Bobby alone were left of
the little company; and Bobby, staring back at the district attorney,
took a sombre pride in facing it out until even the men with the spades
had gone. The ordeal, he reflected, had lost its poignancy. His mind was
intent on the empty trappings he had witnessed. He wondered if there
was, after all, no justice against his grandfather in this unkempt
burial. The place might have something to tell him. If it could only
make him believe that beyond the inevitable fact nothing mattered. If
he were sure of that it would offer a way out at the worst; perhaps the
happiest exit for Katherine's sake.

Then Doctor Groom returned. His huge hairy figure dominated the cemetery.
His infused eyes, beneath the thick black brows, were far-seeing. They
seemed to penetrate Bobby's thought. Then they glanced at the excavation,
appearing to intimate that Silas Blackburn's earthy blanket could hide
nothing from the closed eyes it sheltered. At his age he faced the near
approach of that inevitable fact, and he didn't hesitate to look beyond.
Bobby knew what Graham had meant when he had said that Groom had brought
the ghosts back with him. It was as if the cemetery had recalled the old
doctor to answer his presumptuous question.

"There's no use your staying here."

The resonance of the deep voice jarred through the woods. The broad
shoulders twitched. One of the hairy hands made a half circle.

"I hope you'll clean this up, my boy. You ought to replace the stones and
trim the graves. You couldn't blame them, could you, if these old people
were restless and tried to go abroad?"

For Bobby, in spite of himself, the man on whose last shelter the earth
continued to fall became once more a potent thing, able to appraise the
penalty of his own carelessness.

"Come," Katherine whispered.

But Bobby lingered, oddly fascinated, supporting the ordeal to its final
moment. The blows of the back