Under the centre tree was a cairn of loose stones, more than half buried under the detritus of many years, it is true, but evidently the work of men’s hands.
“That’s it, sure!” cried the old man. “First time you’ve seen this place, Pauline?” he queried, with a touch of grim cynicism.
“Of course!” she replied. “What do you mean, Father?—and yet—” she hesitated, looking around her—“yet I do have a strange sort of feeling as though I had been here before. But I can’t have! It’s absurd!”
Mother and daughter sat down under the shade of the trees whilst we three set to work to open the cairn. I was as excited as they by this time, and I helped with a will. The old man, wielding his pick with the skill of an ex-miner, loosened the stones on the surface. I rolled away the big ones, and Geoffrey shovelled away the smaller stuff. At the end of an hour we had made a pretty deep excavation. We then took it in turns to work with pick and shovel in the hole, from which we threw up the stones.
Suddenly Geoffrey uttered an exclamation.
“We’re on something!—What’s that, doctor?” He passed me up a long bone.
“That’s the tibia of a man,” I replied. “I expect you’ll find the rest of him there.”
“Sure thing!” he said. “Here he is!” He cleared away one or two large lumps of rock and revealed the grinning skeleton of a man. “Hallo!” he added, as he bent down to it, “what’s this?”
A long thin stiletto was lying loosely between the fleshless ribs of the skeleton.
The old man snatched it from him as he plucked it out.