Night came on in murk and mist. As the clouds gathered thicker, Chester Kent’s face took on a more and more satisfied expression. Sedgwick, on the contrary, gloomed sorely at the suspense. Nothing could be elicited from the director of operations, who was, for him, in rather wild spirits. The tennis match seemed to have sweated the megrims out of him. He regaled his chafing friend with anecdotes from his varied career; the comedy of the dynamiter’s hair; the tragedy of the thrice fatal telephone message at the Standard Club; the drama of the orchid hunt on Weehawken Heights. From time to time he thrust a hand out of the window. Shortly after midnight there was a splatter of rain on the roof. “Good!” said Kent, stretching elaborately. “Couldn’t be better. Life’s a fine sport!” “Couldn’t be worse, I should think,” contradicted Sedgwick. “Depends on the point of view, my boy. No longer can my buoyant spirit support your determined melancholy—without extraneous aid. The time has come for action. Be thankful. Get on your coat.” Sedgwick brightened at once. “Right-o!” he said. “Get your lamps lighted and I’ll be with you.” “No lights. Ours is a deep, dark, desperate, devilish, dime-novel design.” “Ending, most likely, in the clutch of some night-hawk constable for violation of the highway laws.” “Possibly. We’ve got to chance it. ‘Come into the garden, Maud,’” chanted the scientist. Sedgwick started. “I thought we were going to motor somewhere. What about the garden?” “About the garden? Why, somewhere about the garden there must be, I should guess, certain implements which we need in our enterprise.” He executed a solemn dance-step upon the floor and warbled, “‘Oh, a pickax and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet!’” A sudden thought struck cold into the heart of Sedgwick. “Be sensible, can’t you?” he exclaimed. “What do you want with a pickax and spade!” “My wants are few and small. If you haven’t a pick, two spades will do. In fact, they’ll be better. I was merely sticking to the text of my _Hamlet_.” His shoulders slumped, his jaw slackened, and, as his figure warped into the pose of the gravedigger he wheezed out the couplet again. The cold thought froze around Sedgwick’s heart. He visioned the wet soil of Annalaka burying-ground, heaped above a loose-hasped pine box, within which went forward the unthinkable processes of earth reclaiming its own. “Good God! Is it _that_?” he muttered. The mummer straightened up. “In plain prose, do you possess two spades?” he inquired. Speechless, Sedgwick went out into the dark, presently returning with the tools. Kent took them out and disposed them in the car. “Get in,” he directed. “If we had to do this, Kent,” said Sedgwick, shuddering in his seat, “why haven’t we done it before?” The other turned on the power. “You’re on the wrong track as usual,” he remarked. “It couldn’t be done before.”