"No, indeed I will not." He went out some thirty yards, and then stopped, finding the ground began to decline. As she sat on the turf she could see his form against the sky; it was certainly lighter. In a rude circle the great grey boulders crouched around her; just opposite was the dolmen. It was built of three large flat stones set on edge, forming the walls, and over these an immense flat one--the table-stone-- made the roof, which sloped slightly aside. A dwarf house, of Cyclopaean masonry; a house of a single chamber, the chamber of the dead. The place, she had heard, was the sepulchre of an ancient king-- of a nameless hero. This Cave, as the shepherds called it, was a tomb. They had a dim tradition of the spirits haunting such magic circles of the Past. A sense of loneliness came over her--the silence of the vast expanse around weighed upon her; an unwonted nervousness took possession of her, as it naturally might in that dreary gloom. She tried to smile at herself, and yet put out her hand, and touched the mare's neck--she was grazing near: it was companionship. "Margaret!" Her name startled her in the oppressive stillness; she was glad to rise and go to him, away from that shadowy place. "The clouds are breaking fast," he said. "It will not rain; I am going to light a fire." "A fire! Why, it is too warm now." "Not for heat, but as a beacon. Some shepherd may see it, and come to us." "Indeed he would not,"--a little petulantly, for she was overtired. "He would be afraid, and say it was Jack o' the Lanthorn." "Well, I will try; possibly a farmer may see it." "But where is your fuel? You cannot see to pick up sticks in the copse." "I stumbled on two hurdles just now; one has been thatched with straw." "I know; that is what the shepherds prop up with a stake, and sit behind as a shelter from the wind." "And the furze-bush here will burn." She watched him tear some leaves out of his pocket-book, and place the fragments under the furze; then he added a little straw from the thatched hurdle, and a handful of dry grass. "The stars are coming out again," said Margaret, looking round; "and what is that glow of light yonder?" There was a white reflection above the eastern horizon where she pointed. "It must be the moon rising," he said, and applied a match to his bonfire. A blue tongue of flame curled upwards, an odour of smoke arose, and then a sharp crackling, and a sudden heat, that forced them to stand away. The bush burned fiercely, hissing and crackling as the fibres of the green wood and the pointed needles shrivelled up. By the light of the tawny flames he now saw the weary expression of her face; she must rest somewhere and somehow. "Quick, Geoffrey! it is going out; throw your hurdles on." "On second thoughts I will not burn the hurdles." Nothing flares so swiftly or sinks so soon as furze; in a few minutes the beacon was out.