"I hope," said Eric.

As we arrived at the new road, also perpendicular to the highway, the group fell into silence for a while. We were away from the cabin and from the night and from the ghosts, I thought.

The sun came out again. A small dog started to trot over from a farm across the street while Eric and Tim set up the new shot. He walked over to Nora, who tried to pet him. The dog barked twice, and retreated fast to his home.

"Come back here and bark like a dog!" yelled Tommy. He turned to us. "That's something," he said. "Dog comes over, barks twice, and takes its leave. The dog of two barks."

The take went well and now we were back at the first road. It was almost three o'clock. No one talked about lunch, no one could even think about it, for this new shot was going to be murder.

TIM WAS to be roped to the front of the jeep, and, with the camera mounted in front of him on the hood, would shoot a conversation between Tommy and Nora as the car sped down the highway at 25 m.p.h. Eric would crouch in the back of the jeep with the tape recorder, holding the mike below the range of the camera.

It looked bad. The cold was increasing and the imperceptibly increasing greyness told us that it was getting late. We were behind schedule. It would take time to tape the camera to the jeep, rope Tim, wait for the right highway conditions. And Nora and Tommy were still unsure of their lines.

Phoebe and I sat in the station wagon, listening to the radio ("Secret Agent Man") while Tommy and Nora walked down the road going over dialogue. They walked quickly, down opposite sides of the street. Suddenly Tommy did a quick about-face. Nora followed suit. She had picked up a twig and was smoking a cigarette. They met up with Tim, and he went over the script with them.

"I've got to get this in 40 minutes," he said. He smoked a cigarette, the only time he did so the whole weekend.

As the run-through approached, there were more problems. Tim found that the camera caught his own reflection in the jeep's windshield. Eric had brought the wrong mike and had to drive back to the cabin to get the right one.

At 4 p.m., the problems seemed corrected. The jeep, with Tim on the hood, started down the highway. But the mike was distorting, and the camera reflection still apparent.

It was getting greyer and greyer. Phoebe was cold. I was cold. Nora was cold.

"Why don't we do it inside?" she said, only half-smiling. "I think it's a wonderful idea. We could use moving scenery and we'd have nice warm warmth."

Warmth. There was none of that now. Eric and Tim fooled around silently with the jeep. Tommy was smoking and still. Phoebe and Nora went to the station wagon, turned on the motor and the heat, and sat silenly inside. The sun began to set. And at 4:15, a Milford cop car pulled up, its blue roof light flashing.

Eric talked to the cop, who checked the registration of our cars. After a while he left. No one in the group had paid much attention to him. Eric said, "He just wanted us to prove that we're doing what we're doing."