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him i' th' cold ground. My brother shall know of it, and so I thank you for your good counsel . . . Good night!"
    Spencer, recognizing the quotation, gave Mark Underhill a questioning look, but the young man only smiled and shook his head. Delayed shock, he thought. He made a mental note to talk to Laura Bruce about arranging counseling for both of them.
    The Underhills were buried within the iron gates of Oakdale, the cemetery in Hamelin. There were many small cemeteries on the mountainsides in Dark Hollow, but they were all family plots, on land still owned by descendants of the deceased. Mark and Maggie Underhill hadn't wanted to start such a tradition on the farm. They were still strangers to the land and the community, and perhaps they wanted to remove the memories of the tragedy far from their own doorstep.
    They huddled together now at the graveside, a little apart from the other mourners—most curiosity seekers drawn by the notoriety of the case. It was a cloudless autumn day. Buffalo Mountain's maple trees shone like a bloodstain

    against the shadows of the pines on its slopes, but the cemetery grass was still green.
    Spencer Arrowood watched the two surviving Underhills with pity tinged with defensiveness. There wasn't anything he could have done, he told himself, but he felt obliged to come to the funeral. Now that he was in Oakdale, though, he found himself thinking about another graveside service, more than twenty years ago. He had been Mark Underbill's age then. He wondered if he had looked as pale and stupefied. He knew he had felt like that. The whole world had suddenly—randomly, it seemed—needed readjusting, and he had been given no advance notice to get accustomed to the change. He remembered staring at the flag-draped casket and feeling nothing but adolescent selfconsciousness. Surely all these people were staring at him throughout the ceremony, waiting to report his every facial expression. He had resolved to have none, and that effort of will had made him oblivious to the words of the funeral service. He had never been able to remember what was said that day. Only that it seemed to last a long time in the summer heat and that it had ended with taps.
    More than fifty people had turned up for the Underhill burial. Most of them had worn the traditional dark clothes, but because it was cold, they had been forced to add whatever coat they owned over their mourning outfits, so that the assembly was a curious mixture of reds and browns, with an occasional muffler of riotous plaid to break the solemnity. At the edge of the

    crowd he saw Laura Bruce, looking solemnly formal in a dark suit and hat. He almost raised his hand to wave to her, but he decided that it wouldn't show proper respect to the deceased to be glad-handing the mourners at the graveside. After the funeral he would approach her and relay the Underhills' request that she be appointed their nonresident guardian until Mark turned eighteen.
    He noticed that Nora Bonesteel wasn't present. People said that she never did attend a funeral. Probably just visited with the deceased at her home up there on the mountain, he told himself sardonically. He had heard the legends about the old woman of Ashe Mountain without considering them one way or another. It didn't matter to him if she saw ghosts or not; such things had no place in his world of order and law and finding probable cause. His mother had been full of questions about the Underhill case. Did Nora Bonesteel really foresee the deaths? Had Spencer discussed it with her? (That would be the day.) He hoped none of the supernatural business found its way into the newspaper accounts of the case. The murders were sensational enough without bringing ghost stories into it. He wanted the Underhills to be left in peace.
    The elderly lay preacher who was substituting for Will Bruce had balked at the task of delivering a graveside eulogy in such sensational circumstances, and after a short Sunday meeting, the