’I wish I had never come to Langford,’ he muttered to himself. ’It’s Honor’s doing. If I go wrong, she is to blame. She sent me here, and all for ninepence.’ Then, stepping forward beside the housekeeper, ’I say, Mrs. Veale, how do you manage to stow anything away in a mound?’ ’Easy, if the mound be not solid,’ she replied. ’There is a sort of stone coffin in the middle, made of pieces of granite set on end, and others laid on top. When the treasure-seekers dug into the hill, they came as far as one of the stones, and they stove it in, but found nothing, or, if they found aught, they carried it away. Then, I reckon, they put the stone back, or the earth fell down and covered all up, and the heather bushes grew over it all. But I looked one day about there for a place where I could hide things. I thought as the master had his secret place, I’d have mine too; and I knew no place could be safer than where old Wellon hung, as folk don’t like to come too near it—leastways in the dark. Well, then, I found a little hole, as might have been made by a rabbit, and I cleared it out; and there I found the gap and the stone coffin. I crept in, it were not over big, but wi’ a light I could see about. I thought at first I’d come on Wellon’s bones, but no bones were there, nothing at all but a rabbit nest, and some white snail shells. After that I made up the entrance again, just as it was, and no one would know it was there. But I can find it; there is a bunch of heath by it, and some rushes, and how rushes came to grow there beats me.’ ’So you keep Wellon’s hand in there, do you?’ ’Yes, I do.’ ’How did you manage to get it?’ ’I will not tell you.’ ’I do not believe you have it; I don’t believe but what you told me a parcel of lies about the Hand of Glory. I’ve been to Afghanistan, and Cabul, and the Bombay Presidency, and never heard of such a thing. It is not in reason. If a dead hand can move, why has not my finger that was cut off in battle come back to me?’ ’Shall I send the Hand after it?’ The suggestion made Charles uneasy. He looked about him, as afraid to see the black hand running on the grass, leaping the tufts of furze, carrying his dead finger, to drop it at his feet. ’What are you muttering?’ asked he, sharply. ’I’m only repeating, Hand of Glory! Hand of Light! Fetch, fetch! Run and bring——’ ’I’ll strike you down if you go on with your devilry, you hag,’ said Charles, angrily. ’We are at the place.’ They entered the cutting made by the treasure-seekers, the gap in which Honor had often sat in the sun, unconscious of the stone kistvaen hidden behind her, indifferent to the terrors of the haunted hill, whilst the sun blazed on it. ’The night is much darker than it was,’ said Charles uneasily, as he looked about him. It was as he said. The black mass of cloud had spread and covered the sky, cutting off the light except from the horizon.