And now, with what would seem to an outsider the acme of gruesome unconscious comedy, the whole funeral mummery of the afternoon was listlessly repeated. Again the organ wheezed, again the choir screeched and scraped, again a droning incantation arose, and again the morbidly curious spectators filed past a macabre object--this time a dual array of mortuary repose. Same of the more sensitive people shivered at the whole proceeding, and again Stephen Barbour felt an underlying note of eldritch horror and demoniac abnormality. God, how life-like both of those corpses were ... and how in earnest poor Thorndike had been about not wanting to be judged dead ... and how he had hated Tom Sprague ... but what could one do in the face of common sense--a dead man was a dead man, and there was old Doc Pratt with his years of experience ... if nobody else bothered, why should one bother oneself?... Whatever Tom had got he had probably deserved ... and if Henry had done anything to him, the score was even now ... well, Sophie was free at last.... As the peering procession moved at last toward the hall and the outer door, Sophie was alone with the dead once more. Elder Atwood was out in the road talking to the hearse-driver from Lee's livery stable, and Deacon Leavitt was arranging for a double quota of pall-bearers. Luckily the hearse would hold two coffins. No hurry--Ed Plummer and Ethan Stone were going ahead with shovels to dig the second grave. There would be three livery hacks and any number of private rigs in the cavalcade--no use trying to keep the crowd away from the graves. Then came that frantic scream from the parlor where Sophie and the bodies were. Its suddenness almost paralyzed the crowd and brought back the same sensation which had surged up when Luella had screamed and fainted. Steve Barbour and Deacon Leavitt started to go in, but before they could enter the house Sophie was bursting forth, sobbing and gasping about "That face at the window!... that face at the window!..." At the same time a wild-eyed figure rounded the corner of the house, removing all mystery from Sophie's dramatic cry. It was, very obviously, the face's owner--poor crazy Johnny, who began to leap up and down, pointing at Sophie and shrieking, "She knows! She knows! I seen it in her face when she looked at 'em and talked to 'em! She knows, and she's a-lettin' 'em go down in the earth to scratch an' claw for air.... But they'll talk to her so's she kin hear 'em ... they'll talk to her, an' appear to her ... and some day they'll come back an' git her!" Zenas Wells dragged the shrieking half-wit to a woodshed behind the house and bolted him in as best he could. His screams and poundings could be heard at a distance, but nobody paid him any further attention. The procession was made up, and with Sophie in the first hack it slowly covered the short distance past the village to the Swamp Hollow burying-ground.