They came down a long, gentle slope, through grey stone and flowering heather. They had momentum now. The horse lifted the great brown bells of his hooves and the ground slid comfortably beneath them, but fifty yards from the house Lacroix tightened the reins and they stopped. He did not know why, and when Emily asked what it was he said it was nothing, nothing. He started the horse moving again but he felt different now, as though his eye had registered some flaw in the pattern of things he could not yet name. The green front door was shut, the windows coloured with the flat glare of the sun. Anyone inside the house would be able to see out easily enough but you could not see in.

He rode up close to the door, swung Emily down then climbed down himself. For a moment he considered the wisdom of leaving her outside while he went into the house on his own but she held his arm tightly and they went together. The front door opened at the turn of the handle. (The door had a keyhole but if it had a key Lacroix had never seen it, nor were there any bolts on the back of it.) The second door, the door into the big room, stood wide. They paused at the threshold. Lacroix looked in. The ottoman, the stairs. A shawl on the floor by the bottom of the stairs where perhaps it had slid from the banister. The dining table was spread with sheets from a newspaper and on the paper were pieces of shaped stone and pottery. The kitchen door was shut, the door to Cornelius’s room partly open.

“Jane?” called Emily. “Cornelius?”

They went to the kitchen. The door to the outside—another unlockable, unboltable door—was shut. Two pots with some congealed matter in the bottom of them stood on the range. There was no fire and no embers. They returned to the big room.

Lacroix sat Emily on the ottoman and went up the stairs to Jane’s room. He knocked, entered. The bed was unmade, tousled. He touched the sheets as though hopeful they might still be warm. For several seconds he stared out through her window. When he came down the stairs he picked up the shawl and put it around Emily’s shoulders.

“It is us who will welcome them back to the house,” he said. He pressed the wall by the ottoman, moved along a little and pressed again. The door of his room swung open. Emily’s guittar, his fiddle case, the bed with his little pile of possessions on it, the uncurtained window.

“I know where they are,” called Emily.

“Yes?”

“They will be on the hill watching the sun set.”

He went and crouched by her knees. “At the excavation?”

“You could fetch them,” she said.

“The sun will be down in a couple of hours. They’ll come back then.”