“This is the place,” he said.
“The place!” echoed Blythewood, looking about him bewildered.
“Hurry, Whimple!” cried his master.
There was a great tang of blackthorn and bramble—a little lonely thicket of it—heaped against the lower slope of the mound. From this thicket, all tossed with snow, two or three crippled beech-saplings escaped, throwing wild arms aloft as if their lower limbs were pinned in the jaws of some hidden monster in the brushwood. Thither the man made his way, and the others followed.
“They are but suckers,” he said, “of an old giant trunk, the decayed butt of which lies there in the bush. It may have fallen and been removed a hundred years ago. But while it was alive its great roots were busy undermining this hillock and boring a passage into the heart of it.”
He turned to his master.
“For all I know, sir, she was the first to discover the way and the first to penetrate to the chamber within.”
“The chamber?”
“Aye, gentlemen. This is an ancient barrow of the dead, and the goal of our hopes.”
Luvaine pushed rudely past him. The inner character of the man seemed to reveal itself in the neighbourhood of success.