The dry, dark-brown granules shifted smoothly, like sand in an hourglass, as he rotated the glass cylinder. The label appeared, in Tansy's clear script. "Julia Trock, Roseland." A cosmetician? Was Roseland a part of the name, or a place? And why should the idea that it might be a place seem distasteful? His hand knocked aside the cardboard cover as he reached for a second bottle, identical with the first, except that the contents had a somewhat reddish tinge, and the label read, "Philip Lassiter, Hill." A third, contents same color as the first: "J. P. Thorndyke, Roseland." Then a handful, quickly snatched up, of three: "Emelyn Scatterday, Roseland." "Mortimer Pope, Hill." "The Rev. Bufort Ames, Roseland." The silence in the house grew thunderous; even the sunlight seemed to sizzle and fry, as his mind rose to a sudden pitch of concentration on the puzzle. "Roseland and Hill, Roseland and Hill, Roseland and Hill," like a nursery rhyme somehow turned nasty, making the glass cylinders repugnant to his fingers. "Roseland Hill--" Abruptly the answer came. The two local cemeteries. Graveyard dirt. Soil specimens all right. Graveyard dirt from particular graves. A chief ingredient of Negro conjure magic. * * * * * With a soft thud Totem landed on the table and began to sniff inquisitively at the bottles, but sprang away as Norman plunged his hand into the drawer. He felt smaller boxes behind the big one, yanked suddenly at the whole drawer, so it fell to the floor. In one of the boxes were bent, rusty, worn bits of iron--horseshoe nails. In the other were calling-card envelopes, filled with snippings of hair, each labeled like the bottles, but some of these names he knew. And in one--fingernail clippings. In the third drawer he drew blank. But the fourth yielded a varied harvest. Packets of small dried leaves and powdered vegetable matter--so that was what came from Tansy's herb garden along with kitchen seasonings? Vervain, vinmoin, devil's snuff. Bits of lodestone, iron filings clinging to them. Goose quills which spilled quicksilver when he shook them. Small squares of flannel, the sort that Negro conjure doctors employed for their "tricken-bags" or "hands." A box of old silver coins and silver filings--strong protective magic; giving significance to the coins, all silver, in front of his photograph. But Tansy was so sane--so healthily contemptuous of palmistry, astrology, numerology and all the other superstitious fads. A hard-headed New Englander. So well versed, from her work with him, in the psychological background of superstition and primitive magic. And yet--