“How came it there?” Howel said, wondering.

“Who can tell,” I answered, turning over many possibilities in my mind.

“One thing is certain,” Evan said,—­“no man set it in that place meaningly, for there he must have known that it would be whelmed soon or late.”

“Nor could it have been dropped there,” I answered.  “None would go so near the edge of the bog.  It was surely thrown there.  One thought to hurl it into the pool.  Yet if so he could have done it, or would have tried again.”

“Come, let us search the place,” said Howel.

I hung the sword to my saddle bow, while Evan took the horses.  The leather scabbard was black with the bog water of the turf where it had been set, but the blade within it was yet bright and keen.

Then I and the prince together walked slowly round the edge of the black pool on the broad stretch of grass between the bog around it and the loosely piled stones of the cliffs’ foot.  Here and there even this turf shook to our tread, as if it too were undermined with bog, and we went warily, therefore, wishing that we had not left our spears by the horses.

“One would call such a place as this ‘the devil’s cauldron’ in our land,” said Howel.  “I mislike it altogether.”

Then he sprang back with a start, and clutched my arm and pointed to the ground at his feet.  The skull of a man grinned up at us, half sunk in the green turf, and the ends of ribs shewed how he to whom it had belonged lay.  There went a cold chill through me as I looked; but I saw that the bones were old, very old.  They had nought to do with our trouble, and what had been to others about the loss of him who had died here was long past and forgotten, or amended.  But for the sake of what had been I was fain to unhelm for a moment as we stepped past them.

So we went on silently until we were halfway to the menhir, and then we saw that there was yet another way into this place, for across the water a jutting wall of rock had hidden a gorge that had surely been cleft by water, for down it came a little stream that seemed to sink into the turf so soon as it reached it.

“That is what fills the pool,” said I, “and it must find its way hence underground like the stream at Cheddar.  The pool may be fathomless.  I would that I could look into its depths.”

“What may not be in yonder gorge?” said Howel.  “We must go and see.”

So we came to the menhir’s foot, and though the bog came almost to it there was yet a little mound of turf on which it stood, and I went to that to see if thence I could peer deeper into the dark water, but I could not.

“Come,” Howel said, “it is midday, and I for one would not be on these hills on Midsummer Eve.  Call me heathenish if you like, but this is an unlucky night whereon to walk in the haunts of the good folk.”