“Cut and run, in fact!” added Hereward.
“The voice of the siren tempts me to go—to escape the voice of the siren who stays!” wavered Athelstane.
“Oh, come along, old sport!” urged Ingred. “What are a few old bones to Red Ridge Barrow? You can swat tonight to make up, if you want to.”
“It’s three to one!” said Athelstane, giving way gracefully; “and there mayn’t be any more fine Saturdays for walks.”
The four young people started forth with the delightful sense of having the day before them. It was fairly early, and a hazy November sun had not yet drawn the moisture from the heather. On the moor the few trees were bare, but the golden autumn leaves still clothed the woods in the sheltered valley that stretched below. Masses of gossamer covered with dewdrops lay among the bracken, like fairies’ washing hung out to dry. There was a hint of hoarfrost under the bushes. The air had that delicious invigorating quality when every breath sets the body dancing. It was too late in the year for flowers, though here and there a little gorse lingered, or a few buttercups and hawkweeds. After about an hour of red haziness the sun pierced the bank of mist and shone out gloriously, almost as in summer; the birds, ready to snatch a moment’s joy, were flitting about tweeting and calling, a water-wagtail took a bath in a shallow pool of a stream, and a great flock of bramblings, rare visitors in those parts, paused in their migration to hold a chattering conference round an old elder tree.
The Saxons were determined today to go farther afield than their walks had hitherto taken them. The local guidebook mentioned some prehistoric menhirs and a chambered barrow on the top of Red Ridge, a distant hill, so they had fixed that as their Mecca.
It was a considerable tramp, but the bracing air helped them on, and they sat down at last to eat their lunch by the side of the path that led to the summit. The boys had wished to mount to the top without calling a halt, but the girls had struck, and insisted on a rest before the final climb.
“Pity Mother isn’t here!” said Ingred, voicing the general feeling of the family, which always missed its central pivot.
“Yes, but it would have been too great a trapse for her, poor darling!” qualified Quenrede. “I don’t see how we could get her all this way unless we hired a pony.”
“Or borrowed an aeroplane. One seems about as possible as the other,” grunted Ingred.
“She shall have a photo of the stones at any rate,” said Hereward, fingering his camera. “Hurry up and finish, you girls, or the light will be gone!”
“Well, we can’t bolt our sandwiches at the rate you do! I wonder you don’t choke!”
The old gray stones stood in a circle on the top of the hill, from whence they had possibly seen four thousand summers and winters pass by. Whether their original purpose was temple, astronomical observatory, or both is one of the riddles of antiquarian research, for neolithic man left no record of his doings beyond the weapons buried with him in his barrow. Legend, however, like a busy gossip, had stepped in and supplied points upon which history was silent. Traditions of the neighborhood explained the menhirs as twelve giants turned into stone by the magic powers of good King Arthur, who, in defiance of the claims of the isle of Avalon, was supposed to be buried in a hitherto unexplored chamber of the large green mound that stood near. Sometimes, so the story ran, the giants whispered to one another, and anyone who came there alone at daybreak on May morning might glean much useful information regarding the personal appearance of his or her future lover. As it was obviously difficult to reach so out-of-the-way a spot at such a very early hour, the oracles were seldom consulted at the one and only moment when they were supposed to whisper. There were reputed, however, to be other and easier means of gleaning knowledge from them. Ingred, who had been priming herself with local lore, confided details of the occult ceremonial to Quenrede.
“It sounds rather thrillsome!” admitted that damsel doubtfully. “I’d really like to try it, only the boys would tease me to death. You know what they are!”
“They’re going over there to photograph the cromlech. You’d have time before they come back.”
“Shall I?”
“Go on!”
“Tell me again what to do.”
“You let your hair down, and walk bareheaded in and out and in and out round all the circle of stones. Then you put an offering of flowers on that biggest stone—the Giant King, he’s called—and throw a pebble into the little pool below. You count the bubbles that come up—one for A, two for B, etc.—and they’ll give you the initial of your future lover. With very great luck, you might see his shadow in the pool, but that does not often happen.”
“I don’t believe in it, of course, but I’ll try for fun! The Giant King won’t get much in the way of a bouquet today!”
Quenrede, protesting her scepticism, but all the same palpably enjoying the magic experiment, picked an indifferent nosegay of the few buttercups, hawkweeds, and late pieces of scabious which were the only flowers available. Then she removed her hairpins, and, letting down a shower of flaxen hair, commenced her winding pilgrimage among the old gray stones. There is a vein of superstition in the most modern of minds, and she was probably following a custom that had come down the ages from the days when our primitive ancestresses clothed themselves in skins and twisted their prehistoric locks with pins of mammoth ivory. In and
