“I grew uneasy again as we came to it, but was ashamed to show my fear in the broad daylight.
“On the top we found a curious thing, which Jack’s father told us was one of the old customs of the broomsquires, that no one was altogether able to explain. The ground was shovelled away, so as to form a kind of sloping passage downwards into the earth. The passage was not more than five yards long; and at the end of it, just where it was covered by the ground overhead, was a sort of altar, made of earth and stones beaten flat; and plastered into its surface were bits of old china and glass. But what startled us was to find a dark patch of something which had soaked deep into the ground before the altar. It was still damp.”
When the old man had read so far, he laid down the book.
“When I told all this to the Professor,” he said, “he seemed very deeply interested. He told us, I remember, that the wound on the pig identified the nature of the sacrifice that the old man had begun to offer. He called it a ‘blood-eagle,’ and added some details which I will not disgust you with. He said too that the broomsquire had confused two rites––that only human sacrifices should be offered as ‘blood-eagles.’ In fact it all seemed perfectly familiar to him: and he said more than I can either remember or verify.”
“And the woman on the rising ground?” I asked.
“Well,” said the old man, smiling, “the Professor would not listen to my evidence about that. He accepted the early part of the story, and simply declined to pay any attention to the woman. He said I had been reading Norse tales, or was dreaming. He even hinted that I was romancing. Under other circumstances this method of treating evidence would be called ‘Higher Criticism,’ I believe.”
“But it’s all a brutal and disgusting worship,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” said the old man, “very brutal and disgusting; but is it not very much higher and better than the Professor’s faith? He was only a skilled Ritualist after all, you see.”