A moment he paused. The smell of lifeless earth was about him—a dull sense of pressure seemed to set his eardrums tattooing. Then his pupils, relieved of the sheeted glare without, dilated, and he saw the profound gloom of the passage to be broken into by a little glimmer of light at its far end. Hearing his companions behind him, he crept on. So low was the boring that in some places he had to stoop almost double to pass. But he went forward steadily, and all at once regained a thought of space and stopped in amazement and concern.
He was in a little circular chamber, whose walls and floor were built of blocks of unhewn and uncemented stone. Other blocks, roughly squared and shaped, stood on the level here and there; and against one of these was piled a heterogeneous heap of human bones, mixed with fragments of stone implements and arrow-heads and some beads of dull amber. Over all a flaring dip—wedged into a cleft-stick stuck in a crevice of the wall—cast a wavering glow. It made manifest the simple austerity of this antique chamber of the dead; and it did more—it revealed Dennis on his knees beside a pallet of dried turves, whereon something long and gaunt and quiet was extended.
“Whimple!” exclaimed his master softly. He felt Luvaine’s breath at his ear, and extended his arms that the other might not pass. The servant turned his head. A lost, wild expression was in his eyes.
“Dead!” he muttered, in a dreadful voice.
Tuke went forward and looked down. She had noble sepulture, this tameless wanderer. What a fiercely handsome face it was—stone in the midst of stone. But all the age of sixty years of loneliness was gathered in it, now the informing will was withdrawn. In her long discipline of hatred she had yielded so little to her fellows, that not even the right of her burial should be theirs. In her own earth, after all the long vain baying of the human pack, she had lain herself down to die of the frost-stroke; and here she was, as much a part of the ancient cairn as the elf-arrows that were strewn about her.
“Dennis!” said his master again—and the man looked up in his face and said simply: “She was my mother.”
Tuke put his hand gently on his shoulder.
“I have thought as much. You would not have her removed?”
“No, no! Let her lie at peace.”
“I think you are right. Such a tomb as this is for the hunted.”