"Never!"
"I was then—you look at my first photograph, took with Thomas and Jeremy. But now I'm—so strong as a pony."
They ate their meal and Margery did most of the talking, while Jacob, his hunger satisfied, lolled and smoked and listened to her.
Presently they set their faces northward and tramped Ugborough Moor, their goal, Three Barrows, towering ahead among lesser hills. Jacob dearly loved the Moor and discoursed upon it for his sweetheart's benefit.
"They are cairns, not barrows," he explained, when they stood on the great hill; but Margery was occupied with her old thoughts.
"Now even Ugborough looks small," she declared, gazing down whence they had come. "He's not everybody, after all!"
The feminine view amused Jacob and he declared the unimportance of size.
"It's not the greatness of a thing in bulk; it's the goodness and fineness in quality that matters," he told her. "Now we're lifted up between two rivers. Down there runs the Ernie and away beyond Zeal Plains lie the famous 'rings' and your beloved Auna."
They talked of the 'old men' who had built the ruined pounds, alignments and hut circles.
"Were they half apes, or creatures much like ourselves?" asked Margery. "Father says they were less than us, and mother doubts if they had souls at all. But mother says there can't be much hope for any before Jesus Christ came, whatever they were."