"We could pack him down in the ice till a thaw opens up the cemetery a little," suggested Charleton Falkner. "You know what a god-awful job it is making a grave in the cemetery in winter, between the frost and the rocks." "He's going to be buried now, while he's in good trim," declared Grandma. "I'm not going to have him ruined, waiting for spring. You men get to work now, in shifts, like you did for old Ma Day." Grandma's word was law in Lost Chief, and the grave forthwith was prepared. John Spencer, Peter Knight, and Charleton Falkner were appointed by the old lady to do the work, and Douglas accompanied his father. Old Johnny Brown appeared while the work was in process. The cemetery was fenced in, but except for a few simple headstones and monuments, it was unadorned. "Queer the women folks have never fixed this place up a little," said Peter Knight, standing waist-deep in the grave, with John. "Most places I've been, women keep the graves like they would a little garden." Charleton Falkner, resting on a neighboring headstone, smiled sardonically. "Lost Chief women have enough to do without dolling up graves." Cold sweat stood on Doug's forehead. He stared from the gaping grave to the murmuring line of pines that marked the end of the cemetery and the beginning of the Forest Reserve, and shuddered. He had not been sleeping well since the night of the murder. Johnny Brown, small and very thin, with a scraggly iron-gray beard hung with little icicles and his blue eyes watering with the cold, moved away from the headstone against which he had been resting after his turn in the grave. "That boy," he said, jerking his elbow at Doug, "will be massified for many a year for driving the preacher out of Lost Chief." "How do you mean--massify!" demanded Doug, gruffly. Johnny might be half-witted, but his remarks were curiously penetrating sometimes. "I mean massify," grunted Johnny. Peter Knight heaved a great frosted boulder out to the ground level. "Charleton," he said slowly, "doesn't the thought of lying in a forgotten grave give you dumb horrors?" "Sometimes," replied Charleton laconically, as he beat his cold hands together. "But only sometimes." Douglas strained forward in the intensity of his interest. Douglas' father straightened his broad shoulders. "If I let myself think about it, I have to go out and get drunk," he muttered. "You don't conject right about them things," cried Johnny. "You got to listen to things." No one heeded the sad-faced little man. Peter stooped for another frozen clod. "I'd give my right hand for my mother's faith in a living God," he said. "But if there isn't any God, what is there?" cried Douglas, with passionate protest in his voice. "Don't you try to discuss matters you ain't old enough to understand, son," ordered John Spencer. "Unbelief is the price we pay for scientific progress," said Charleton. "Me, I'm willing to pay."