She answered him notwithstanding. “I had to come. There was no choice. But don’t let us stay! I have seen the Rocking Stone move. I have seen—a thing like a devil in the barn.”
“How long have you been here?” he said.
She was shivering still. “I don’t know—a long time. But that awful thing——”
He turned towards the barn. “Your nerves have been playing you tricks,” he said. “There is nothing here.”
She hung back, still clinging to him, reassured by his confidence in spite of herself, yet afraid beneath her reassurance.
“It couldn’t have been fancy. I am not fanciful. Arthur, don’t go! Don’t go!”
He stopped and looked at her, and in his eyes was that which strangely moved her, stilling her entreaty, overwhelming her fear, banishing every thought in her heart but the one great rapture of her soul as it leaped to his.
So for a long moment they stood, then his arm went round her. He turned aside.
“We will go to the Stones,” he said, “and leave these banshees to look after themselves. It was probably a goat you saw.”
She went with him, almost convinced that he was right and that her fancy had tricked her. She would have gone with him in that moment if all the ghosts of the centuries had awaited them among the Stones.