Bobby threw off his recent numbness.  He realized the disturbing parallel in the actions of his grandfather and himself.  He had come to the Cedars unconsciously, perhaps directed by an evil, external influence, on the night of the first murder.  Now, it appeared, the man he was accused of killing had also wandered under an unknown impulse that night.  Was the same subtle control responsible in both cases?  Was there at the Cedars a force that defied physical laws, moving its inhabitants like puppets for special aims of its own?  Yet, he recalled, there was something here friendly to him.  After the movement of Howells’s body and the disappearance of the evidence, the return of Silas Blackburn stripped Robinson’s threats of power and seemed to place the solution beyond the district attorney’s trivial reach.

The silence and the delay increased their weight upon the little group.  Silas Blackburn, huddled in his chair, was grayer, more haggard than he had been at first.  He appeared attentive to an expected summons.  He seemed fighting the idea of going back.

The proximity of Graham to Katherine quieted the turmoil of Bobby’s thoughts.  If he could only have foreseen this return he would have listened to the whispered encouragement of the forest.

Robinson reappeared.  Anxiety had replaced the anger in the round face which, one felt, should always have been no more than good-natured.

“Jenkins will have to help,” he said.

Silas Blackburn arose unsteadily.

“I’m coming with you.  You’re not going to leave me here.  I won’t stay here alone.”

“He should come by all means,” Paredes said, “in case anything should happen—­”

The old man put his hands to his ears.

“You keep quiet.  I’m not going back, I tell you.”

Bobby didn’t want to hear any more.  He went to the kitchen and called Jenkins.  He let the butler go to the hall ahead of him in order that he might not have to witness this new greeting.  But Jenkins’s cry came back to him, and when he reached the hall he saw that the man’s terror had not diminished.

They went through the court and around the house to the stable where they found spades and shovels.  Their grim purpose holding them silent, they crossed the clearing and entered the pathway that had been freshly blazed that day for the passage of the men in black.

The snow was quite deep.  It still drifted down.  It filled the woods with a wan, unnatural radiance.  Without really illuminating the sooty masses of the trees it made the night white.

Silas Blackburn stumbled in the van with Paredes and Robinson.  The doctor and Rawlins followed.  Graham was with Katherine behind them.  Bobby walked last, fighting an instinct to linger, to avoid whatever they might find beneath the white blanket of the little, intimate burial ground.

Groom turned and spoke to Graham.  Katherine waited for Bobby, and the white night closed swiftly about them, whispering until the shuffling of the others became inaudible.