ch comes between friends, and the nearer the
friends the more deathly the cold. Silas made a little effort to speak
of business-matters, but could not keep it up, and soon a silence
settled over the party, only broken by the words of table-service. Mrs.
Kilgore sat pale and frightened all through the meal without venturing a
single phrase, and scarcely looking up from her plate.

The silence was of that kind which all felt to be more expressive than
the loudest, most explicit language could be,--more merciless than any
form of verbal accusation. Such silence is a terribly perfect medium,
in which souls are compelled to touch each other, resent as they may
the contact. Several times Joseph was on the point of rising and rushing
from the table. How many more such meals could he stand or could they
stand? All of them recognized that the situation had become perceptibly
more serious and more pronounced on account of that silent tea-table.

There was in particular not the slightest allusion made by any one to
the murder, which, seeing that it had happened but yesterday, and
would naturally still have been an engrossing topic, was an omission
so pointed as to be an open charge of guilt. There is such a thing as
emphasizing a topic by suppressing it, as letters are sunk into stone.
The omission impressed Silas as it did Joseph, but, regarding it from
his point of view, it did not occur to him but that Joseph was the one
solely responsible for it. He, Silas, had refrained from reference to it
because his suspicions in regard to Joseph made the topic unendurable.
But he could not imagine that Joseph could have had any other motive
for his silence on the subject but a guilty conscience,--some secret
knowledge of the crime. Thus regarded, it was a terrible confirmation.
That a perception that he was suspected might cause an innocent man to
act very much as if he were conscious of guilt did not occur to Silas,
as, perhaps, it would have failed to occur to most persons in just his
position.

After leaving the tea-table the brothers went together into the parlor,
according to the family custom. They took their accustomed seats on
opposite sides of the fireplace, but there was no conversation. A veil
was between them. Both were thinking of the same thing,--thinking of
it intensely,--and each knew that the other was thinking of it, and
yet neither for worlds could have commanded the courage to speak of it.
The suspicion had grown def