As he came in he faced the light from the north window, and Bosworth’s first thought was that he looked like a drowned man fished out from under the ice — “self-drowned,” he added. But the snow-light plays cruel tricks with a man’s colour, and even with the shape of his features; it must have been partly that, Bosworth reflected, which transformed Saul Rutledge from the straight muscular fellow he had been a year before into the haggard wretch now before them.

The Deacon sought for a word to ease the horror. “Well, now, Saul — you look’s if you’d ought to set right up to the stove. Had a touch of ague, maybe?”

The feeble attempt was unavailing. Rutledge neither moved nor answered. He stood among them silent, incommunicable, like one risen from the dead.

Brand grasped him roughly by the shoulder. “See here, Saul Rutledge, what’s this dirty lie your wife tells us you’ve been putting about?”

Still Rutledge did not move. “It’s no lie,” he said.

Brand’s hand dropped from his shoulder. In spite of the man’s rough bullying power he seemed to be undefinably awed by Rut-ledge’s look and tone.

“No lie? You’ve gone plumb crazy, then, have you?”

Mrs. Rutledge spoke. “My husband’s not lying, nor he ain’t gone crazy. Don’t I tell you I seen ’em?”

Brand laughed again. “Him and the dead?”

“Yes.”

“Down by the Lamer pond, you say?”

“Yes.”

“And when was that, if I might ask?”

“Day before yesterday.”

A silence fell on the strangely assembled group. The Deacon at length broke it to say to Mr. Brand: “Brand, in my opinion we’ve got to see this thing through.”

Brand stood for a moment in speechless contemplation: there was something animal and primitive about him, Bosworth thought, as he hung thus, lowering and dumb, a little foam beading the corners of that heavy purplish underlip. He let himself slowly down into his chair. “I’ll see it through.”

The two other men and Mrs. Rutledge had remained seated. Saul Rutledge stood before them, like a prisoner at the bar, or rather like a sick man before the physicians who were to heal him. As Bosworth scrutinized that hollow face, so wan under the dark sunburn, so sucked inward and consumed by some hidden fever, there stole over the sound healthy man the thought that perhaps, after all, husband and wife spoke the truth, and that they were all at that moment really standing on the edge of some forbidden mystery. Things that the rational mind would reject without a thought seemed no longer so easy to dispose of as one looked at the actual Saul Rutledge and remembered the man he had been a year before. Yes; as the Deacon said, they would have to see it through . . .

“Sit down then, Saul; draw up to us, won’t you?” the Deacon suggested, trying again for a natural tone.

Mrs. Rutledge pushed a chair forward, and her husband sat down on it. He stretched out his arms and grasped his knees in his brown bony fingers; in that attitude he remained, turning neither his head nor his eyes.

“Well, Saul,” the Deacon continued, “your wife says you thought mebbe we could do something to help you through this trouble, whatever it is.”

Rutledge’s gray eyes widened a little. “No; I didn’t think that. It was her idea to try what could be done.”

“I presume, though, since you’ve agreed to our coming, that you don’t object to our putting a few questions?”

Rutledge was silent for a moment; then he said with a visible effort: “No; I don’t object.”

“Well — you’ve heard what your wife says?”

Rutledge made a slight motion of assent. “And — what have you got to answer? How do you explain . . .?”

Mrs. Rutledge intervened. “How can he explain? I seen ’em.”

There was a silence; then Bosworth, trying to speak in an easy reassuring tone, queried: “That so, Saul?”

“That’s so.”

Brand lifted up his brooding head. “You mean to say you . . . you sit here before us all and say . . . ”

The Deacon’s hand again checked him. “Hold on, friend Brand. We’re all of us trying for the facts, ain’t we?” He turned to Rutledge. “We’ve heard what Mrs. Rutledge says. What’s your answer?”

“I don’t know as there’s any answer. She found us.”

“And you mean to tell me the person with you was . . . was what you took to be . . . ” the Deacon’s thin voice grew thinner: “Ora Brand?”

Saul Rutledge nodded.

“You knew . . . or thought you knew . . . you were meeting with the dead?”

Rutledge bent his head again. The snow continued to fall in a steady unwavering sheet against the window, and Bosworth felt as if a winding-sheet were descending from the sky to envelop them all in a common grave.

“Think what you’re saying! It’s against our religion! Ora . . . poor child! . . . died over a year ago. I saw you at her funeral, Saul. How can you make such a statement?”

“What else can he do?” thrust in Mrs. Rutledge.

There was another pause. Bosworth’s resources had failed him, and Brand once more sat plunged in dark meditation. The Deacon laid his quivering finger-tips together, and moistened his lips.

“Was the day before yesterday the first time?” he asked.

The movement of Rutledge’s head was negative.

“Not the first? Then when . . . ”

“Nigh on a year ago, I reckon.”

“God! And you mean to tell us that ever since —?”

“Well . . . look at him,” said his wife. The three men lowered their eyes.

After a moment Bosworth, trying to collect himself, glanced at the Deacon. “Why not ask Saul to make his own statement, if that’s what we’re here for?”

“That’s so,” the Deacon assented. He turned to Rutledge. “Will you try and give us your idea . . . of . . . of how it began?”

There was another silence. Then Rutledge tightened his grasp on his gaunt knees, and still looking straight ahead, with his curiously clear unseeing gaze: “Well,” he said, “I guess it begun away back, afore even I was married to Mrs. Rutledge . . . ” He spoke in a low automatic tone, as if some invisible agent were dictating his words, or even uttering them for him. “You know,” he added, “Ora and me was to have been married.”

Sylvester Brand lifted his, head. “Straighten that statement out first, please,” he interjected.

“What I mean is, we kept company. But Ora she was very young. Mr. Brand here he sent her away. She was gone nigh to three years, I guess. When she come back I was married.”

“That’s right,” Brand said, relapsing once more into his sunken attitude.

“And after she came back did you meet her again?” the Deacon continued.

“Alive?” Rutledge questioned.

A perceptible shudder ran through the room.

“Well — of course,” said the Deacon nervously.

Rutledge seemed to consider. “Once I did — only once. There was a lot of other people round. At Cold Corners fair it was.” “Did you talk with her then?”

“Only a minute.”

“What did she say?”

His voice dropped. “She said she was sick and knew she was going to die, and when she was dead she’d come back to me.”

“And what did you answer?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you think anything of it at the time?”

“Well, no. Not till I heard she was dead I didn’t. After that I thought of it — and I guess she drew me.” He moistened his lips.

“Drew you down to that abandoned house by the pond?”

Rutledge made a faint motion of assent, and the Deacon added: “How did you know it was there she wanted you to come?”

“She . . . just drew me . . . ”

There was a long pause. Bosworth felt, on himself and the other two men, the oppressive weight of the next question to be asked. Mrs. Rutledge opened and closed her narrow lips once or twice, like some beached shell-fish gasping for the tide. Rutledge waited.

“Well, now, Saul, won’t you go on with what you was telling us?” the Deacon at length suggested.

“That’s all. There’s nothing else.”

The Deacon lowered his voice. “She just draws you?”

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“That’s as it happens . . . ”

“But if it’s always there she draws you, man, haven’t you the strength to keep away from the place?”

For the first time, Rutledge wearily turned his head toward his questioner. A spectral smile narrowed his colourless lips. “Ain’t any use. She follers after me . . . ”

There was another silence. What more could they ask, then and there? Mrs. Rut-ledge’s presence checked the next question. The Deacon seemed hopelessly to revolve the matter. At length he spoke in a more authoritative tone. “These are forbidden things. You know that, Saul. Have you tried prayer?”

Rutledge shook his head.

“Will you pray with us now?”

Rutledge cast a glance of freezing indifference on his spiritual adviser. “If you folks want to pray, I’m agreeable,” he said. But Mrs. Rutledge intervened.

“Prayer ain’t any good. In this kind of thing it ain’t no manner of use; you know it ain’t. I c............