s, and looking up he saw that the clouds were
breaking and that the tip of the moon was showing through. Slowly the
place was bathed in a silvery flood. Back slipped the shadows. Shapes
that had been pressing, close at hand, receded and took the form of
trees, of bushes, lurking there on the edge of the darkness. He saw
the fence corner. He saw the two boards propped up against it, forming
a cache. He saw the pool, a tiny little woodland pool. And then he
caught again that glimmer of white by the foot of a huge beech tree.
Slowly he made his way toward it with beating heart. Slowly it took
shape, a huddled shadow, right on the edge of the light. He touched it
with his foot, careful lest he step beyond. He stooped. He touched it
with his hand. He turned it over. And the moonlight, slipping through
the trees as though to help him, sent a feeble, flickering shaft
down--upon the upturned face of Uncle Buzz. For a moment it rested
there, as if to reassure him, bringing out in misty detail all that
was necessary. The thing was hideously befouled, besmirched, lying
there in that black swamp water, mute, helpless, utterly broken. But
it was unmistakeable. He stretched out his arms and dragged it from
the water, and the clouds, closing in again, obscured the moon,
leaving all in darkness.

CHAPTER VIII

Two days later they buried Mr. Mosby.

Joe had kept his promise. At least he had kept it as well as it was
possible to keep it. It was decided that Mr. Mosby had met his death
by drowning. That is what "One Half of Rome" believed. The "Other Half
of Rome" perhaps had various ideas. It could not be surmised from the
set conventional expressions on the faces of those gathered together
in the back parlour that hot Saturday afternoon just what the
consensus was. There had been at first a surreptitious buzz of
conversation and then deep silence as the Episcopal priest in his long
white vestments came slowly in. Joe felt peculiarly outside of it all.
He was in a sense neither spectator nor mourner. For Mrs. Mosby
depended on the palsied arm of her brother for support. And then there
were a few old ladies, friends of Mrs. Mosby's, and himself bringing
up the rear--merely appended to the family, the last survivor of the
discredited branch. He was conscious of a heavy scent of flowers
banked about the close, dark room, a scent in which the cloying
sweetness of jasmine prevailed. For a moment there was not a sound,
and then the