Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/121

 along the sunlit boards and illustrate his method of discovery of the fact. Ethel knelt and saw that the sunlight glinted on soft dust except in a space, roughly oval and about six feet long, where no dust appeared, but where the bright, hard surface of varnish was scratched and dulled by recent scrubbing and scraping. She pulled off her gloves and with bare finger tips felt the difference in the varnish there and elsewhere.

"Somebody burned cloth in fireplace," Asa informed, going to the hearth and producing a handful of ashes which exhibited the woven texture of cloth; he produced also a charred bit of shaped wood which had been the back of a scrubbing brush. Asa offered it to her and she put out her hand to take it, and then she could not touch it. Blood had stained it before it had been burnt; Kincheloe had put it in the fire to burn away—blood.

Asa had let go of it, thinking that she was taking it, and it dropped to the floor between them. It was to make sure that such trifles as this were completely burnt, she thought, that Kincheloe wished to come to the Rock early this morning. That is the reason her grandfather had sent Kincheloe to the Rock; for she knew that Kincheloe would not have come here this morning of his own accord.

She could think these things; but she could not say them. instead, she argued with herself aloud against them. "What does that mean, Asa?"

"You tell me," the Indian said.

No doubt at all now of what Asa believed; but when he stood waiting upon her, she could not tell him how she had watched her grandfather wandering about his house at midnight and how she had seen Kincheloe