“And the others?”
“There’s another kind no one seen. They say they’re white, this second kind. They live in the woods; in stone houses, too, for the matter of that. And they wear gold masks. No one ever seen ’em, mind you. But you lay out in the woods near ’em, and the first night you’ll hear like singing all round you.”
“Singing?”
“Like little birds. I never like singing like what that is. You only get it the first night.”
“Oh. That’s very curious. What happens then?”
“The second night, if you lay out in the woods, you get your ’ed cut off. You find your corp in the morning, that’s what you find.”
“Why do they cut your head off?” said Perrin.
“Their idea of fun, I s’pose,” said Cammock, with a grin. “Come to that, a corp is a funny thing with no ’ed. They take the ’eds and pickle them after: I’ve seen ’em.”
“What do they do with the heads?” asked Perrin, “when they’ve pickled them?”
“They wear ’em round their necks, for ornament,” said Cammock. “If one of them ducks gets a reglar necklace, like a dozen ’eds, he thinks he’s old Sir Henry.”