"It's a weird sort of story. There was once a lad named Will Killigarth, who lived at Horndon, up on the moor. There was a witch in the village, and she told him that if he would go on Hallowe'en and dig inside one of the ancient stone circles that he would find treasure, only he must go at midnight, and go alone. He was rather frightened of the business, but he took his father's spade and went. It was heavy work digging, but at last he struck something, and drew out a bowl of rough pottery, all full of gold pieces. He was just picking this up when he heard a cry, and in the moonlight he saw a most lovely girl with streaming yellow hair stretching out her hands imploringly to him. She said she was the guardian of the gold, and begged him to bury it again where it was in the circle. He said he would do so if she would marry him, and after thinking awhile she said yes. So he buried the treasure and took the girl home to the village and married her. She lived with him just a year, and then on the next Hallowe'en she vanished, and he never saw her again. He hunted for the stone circle where he had dug before, but he never could find the right one again. There are so many of them up on the moor. So he lost both the treasure and the girl."
"Did they actually believe these stories?" asked Mavis, knitting her brows.
"Oh yes, in the old days they believed them, just as they believed in witches and charms and all the rest of it. Mr. Barnes calls all the old tales folk-history. He says the pixies were the prehistoric Stone Age or Bronze Age people who lived on into historic times, and hid themselves in the mounds or caves or wild places on the moor. The stories of the pixies' habits and haunts read just like accounts of very primitive people. Bronze Age or Stone Age folk would be sure to come at night and steal things from the Celtic tribes who had settled in Devon, and they would bury their treasures inside their huts. The stone circles on the moor are the ruined walls of their huts."
"But surely the Stone Age folk didn't go living on till about the seventeenth century?" asked Mavis, still puzzled.
"No, but you know how people like to bring a story up to date. They often tell you a thing happened to themselves when you know it must have happened to their great-grandfather. The old Celtic accounts of the little men on the moor would keep being handed down, and each generation would fit the story with fresh names, and a few extra details."
"Miss Donald told us a lot about that at Whinburn High. She said the dragons of old folk-tales were probably prehistoric animals that had lingered on in lonely places—very likely pterodactyls."
"I dare say they were. To judge from the fossils that have been found the old monsters must have been pretty common in Devon. You should ask Mr. Barnes. He's great on all this kind of thing, always poking about and digging, and measuring hut circles and all the rest of it."
"It's awfully fascinating," said Mavis.
"Ye-es, but just a trifle spooky," admitted Merle. "Honestly I shouldn't like to spend a night up here camping out in this shanty. I'd be scared to death of the mound dwellers. What are we to do with our prehistoric cups, Bevis? Leave them here or take them back?"
It was decided to wash the cups in a pool of water close by, and leave them inside the hut to be ready for some future picnic. That domestic duty finished, the Triumvirate wended their way back in the direction of Chagmouth. This time they climbed by a pathway down the cliffs on to the beach, in order to go home along the shore. It was low tide, so they could walk on the firm sands at the edge of the high-water mark. Little gentle waves were rippling in over the rocks, cormorants were diving for fish, and the inevitable seagulls were wheeling and screaming, or settling down in the pools to hunt for tit-bits. At the corner of the cove, built on the solid rock barely above the level of winter storms, stood the little old, old church of St. Gervan's, disused now, except for an annual service. Before the building of Chagmouth church in the eighteenth century it had served a wide district, and there were tales that its bell had often proved a signal for ships in a fog, and had warned them off the rocks. There were other and wilder stories, of smugglers who had hidden their contraband goods inside the pews, of the press-gang who had waylaid the fishermen as they returned from service and had carried them off to serve in His Majesty's navy, and of a wicked parson, foremost among a gang of wreckers, whose uneasy ghost still haunted the beach on moonlight nights.