“It is certainly a wonderful place,” she said. “And the farm is close by?”
“Just down the hill on the other side,” he said. “It takes its name from them. Some bygone race probably used the place for sacrifice. The actual Tetherstones to which the victims were said to have been fastened are over there, close to the cattle-shed in which Ruth found you. The shed is just out of sight below the brow of the hill.”
“It is a wonderful place,” Frances said again.
She relinquished his arm, and began to walk a few steps over the grass. The man stood motionless, watching her. His brows were drawn. He had a waiting look.
Suddenly she turned and came back to him. She was smiling, but her face was pale. “Mr. Dermot, I am not sure that I do want to stay here after all,” she said. “There’s something I can’t quite describe—something uncanny in the atmosphere.”
“You want to go?” he said.
She shivered sharply, standing in the full sunshine. “I don’t want to be left alone here.”
“No,” he said, in his brief way. “And I don’t mean you to be here alone.” He put out a hand and pointed to a curiously shaped stone so poised that it seemed to be on the point of rolling towards them. “Do you see that? That is one of the great tetherstones. It is called the stone of sacrifice. It is so balanced that a child could make it rock, but no one could move it from its place. There are marks on that stone that scientists declare have been made by human hands, places where staples have been driven in, and so cunningly devised that prisoners chained to those staples were unharmed so long as they remained passive. But the moment they strained for freedom, the stone rocked slowly to and fro and they were crushed—gradually ground to death.”
“Oh, don’t!” Frances cried. “How gruesome—how horrible!”
“A devil’s paradise!” he said.