“You must. As a witness. Come! Brace up!” Setting the bull’s-eye lantern down, Kent produced a pocket-knife. Sedgwick drew a long breath, and walking over, crouched, steeling his nerves against the revelation that should come when the cords should be cut and the swathings reveal their contents. “If I keel over, don’t let me tumble into the grave,” he said simply, and choked the last word off from becoming a cry of horror as he beheld his friend drive the knife-blade to the hilt in the body, and then whip it across and downward with a long ripping draw under which the harsh cloth sang hideously. “Open your eyes! Look! Look!” cried Kent heartily. A strong trickle of sand flowed out of the rent in the sack and spread upon the ground. “That is all,” said Kent. Relief clamored within Sedgwick for expression. He began to laugh in short choking spasms. “Quiet!” warned Mr. Blair, in a broken tone of appeal. “You’ve found out the secret. God knows what you’ll do with it. But there are innocent people in the house. I see a light stirring there now. We—I must do what I may to shelter them.” A glimmer shone from the ground floor of one of the wings. Thither Mr. Blair ran, calling out as he went. When he returned, his face was like a mask. “Now,” said he, “what is this matter? Blackmail?” Kent’s face withdrew, as it were, behind his inscrutable half smile. “Peace, if you will,” said he. “A truce, at least.” “I should like to know just how much you know.” “An offer. I will tell you whenever you are ready to tell me all that you know. I think we are mutually in need of each other.” “I wish you were at the bottom of that pit,” retorted the other grimly. “You and your scoundrel of a friend with you.” “Thank you for myself,” said Sedgwick. “If you were twenty years younger I would break every bone in your body for that.” “Steady, Frank,” put in Kent. “Judge no man by his speech who has been through what Alexander Blair has been through to-night. Mr. Blair,” he added, “you’ve refused my offer. It is still open. And as an extra, I will undertake, for Mr. Sedgwick and myself, that this night’s affair shall be kept secret. And now, the next thing is to cover the evidence. Spades, Frank.” The two men took up their tools. “I’ll spell you,” said Alexander Blair. While the sheriff, mourning softly over his fractured wrist, sat watching the house in case of alarm, the scientist, the painter, and the trust magnate, sweating amid the nameless graves, hurriedly reinterred the sack of clean sand which bore the name of Wilfrid Blair. “And now,” said Chester Kent, petting his blistered palms, as the last shovelful of dirt was tamped down, “I’ll take you back with me, Mr. Sheriff, to Sedgwick’s place, and do the best I can for you till the morning. About six o’clock we’ll find you unconscious below the cliffs where you fell in the darkness. Eh?”