A white flame sprang across the mound. The trees from formless masses took on individual shapes. A row of cypresses on which the light gleamed were like sombre sentinels, guarding the dead. The snow patches, clustered on their branches, were like funeral decorations pointing their morbid function. The light gave the overturned stones an illusion of striving to struggle from their white imprisonment. Robinson swung his lamp back to the mound. "The snow isn't heavy," he said, "and the ground isn't frozen. It oughtn't to take long." Silas Blackburn commenced to shake. "It's a desecration of the dead." "We have to know," Robinson said, "who is buried in that grave." With a spade Jenkins scraped the snow from the mound. Rawlins joined him. They commenced to throw to one side, staining the white carpet, spadesful of moist, yellow earth. Their labour was rapid. Silas Blackburn watched with an unconquerable fascination. He continued to shake. "I'm too cold. I'll never be warm again," he whined. "If anything happens to me, Bobby, try to forget I've been hard, and don't let them bury me. Suppose I should be buried alive?" "Suppose," Paredes said, "you were buried alive to-day?" He turned to Bobby and Katherine. "That also is possible. You remember the old theories that have never been disproved of the disintegration of matter into its atoms, of its passage through solid substances, of its reforming in a far place? I wouldn't have to ask an East Indian that." Jenkins, standing in the excavation, broke into torrential speech. "Mr. Robinson! I can't work with the light. It makes the stones seem to move. It throws too many shadows. I seem to see people behind you, and I'm afraid to look." Nothing aggressive survived in Rawlins's voice. "We can work well enough without it, sir." Robinson snapped off the light. The darkness descended eagerly upon them. Above the noise of the spades in the soft earth Bobby heard indefinite stirrings. In the graveyard at such an hour the supernatural legend of the Cedars assumed an inescapable probability. Bobby wished for some way to stop the task on which they were engaged. He felt instinctively it would be better not to tamper with the mystery of Silas Blackburn's return. Bobby grew rigid. "There it is again," Graham breathed. A low keening came from the thicket. It increased in power a trifle, then drifted into silence. It wasn't the wind. It was like the moaning Bobby had heard at the stagnant lake that afternoon, like the cries Graham and he had suffered in the old room. Seeming at first to come from a distance, it achieved a sense of intimacy. It was like an escape of sorrow from the dismantled tombs. Bobby turned to Katherine. He couldn't see her for the darkness. He reached out. She was not there. "Katherine," he called softly.