"If I'd been wise, I'd have done just what poor Denis told me to--burned the picture and the body-grasping hair at once and without curiosity--but I was too shaken to be wise. I suppose I muttered foolish things over my boy--and then I remembered that the night was wearing on and that the servants would be back in the morning. It was plain that a matter like this could never be explained, and I knew that I must cover things up and invent a story. "That coil of hair around Marsh was a monstrous thing. I didn't dare touch it, and the longer I looked at it the more horrible things I noticed about it. One thing gave me a start. I won't mention it, but it partly explained the need for feeding the hair with queer oils as Marceline had always done. "In the end I decided to bury all three bodies in the cellar, with quicklime, which I knew we had in the storehouse. It was a night of hellish work. I dug three graves--my boy's a long way from the other two, for I didn't want him to be near either the woman's body or her hair. I was sorry I couldn't get the coil from around poor Marsh. It was terrible work getting them all down to the cellar. I used blankets in carting the woman and the poor devil with the coil around him. Then I had to get two barrels of lime from the storehouse. God must have given me strength, for I not only moved them both but filled all three graves without a hitch. "Some of the lime I made into white-wash. I had to take a stepladder and fix over the parlor ceiling where the blood had oozed through. And I burned nearly everything in Marceline's room, scrubbing the walls and floor and heavy furniture. I washed up the attic studio, too, and the trail and footprints that led there. And all the time I could hear old Sophy's wailing in the distance. The devil must have been in that creature to let her voice go on like that. But she always was howling queer things. That's why the field niggers didn't get scared or curious that night. I locked the studio door and took the key to my room. Then I burned all my stained clothes in the fire-place. By dawn the whole house looked quite normal, so far as any casual eye could tell. I hadn't dared touch the covered easel, but meant to attend to that later. * * * * * "Well, the servants came back next day, and I told them all the young folks had gone to St. Louis. None of the field hands seemed to have seen or heard anything, and old Sophonisba's wailing had stopped at the instant of sunrise. She was like a sphinx after that, and never let out a word of what had been on her brooding witch-brain the day and night before.