“Are you strong enough?” he said. “Of course I am strong enough. When I am tired, I will curl up and sleep in the sunshine.” “You’re not afraid?” he said. She faced him. “Of course I am not afraid. Why should I be?” He lifted his shoulders slightly. “You were—or I imagined you were—a little while ago.” “Oh, that was different,” she said. “Anyway, I am not so foolish now. I could sit here for hours and sketch.” “It has been called the devil’s paradise,” he said rather harshly. She snapped her fingers and laughed. “I am never afraid of the devil when the sun is out. Are you?” “Sometimes,” he said. He jumped to the ground and turned to help her, the reins over his arm. She slipped down into his hold. “But there is nothing to frighten anyone here,” she said. Even as she spoke, her heart misgave her a little. The Stones looked more imposing from the ground. Some of them had an almost threatening aspect. They seemed to crouch like gigantic monsters about to spring. “It is certainly a wonderful place,” she said. “And the farm is close by?” “Just down the hill on the other side,” he said. “It takes its name from them. Some bygone race probably used the place for sacrifice. The actual Tetherstones to which the victims were said to have been fastened are over there, close to the cattle-shed in which Ruth found you. The shed is just out of sight below the brow of the hill.” “It is a wonderful place,” Frances said again. She relinquished his arm, and began to walk a few steps over the grass. The man stood motionless, watching her. His brows were drawn. He had a waiting look. Suddenly she turned and came back to him. She was smiling, but her face was pale. “Mr. Dermot, I am not sure that I do want to stay here after all,” she said. “There’s something I can’t quite describe—something uncanny in the atmosphere.” “You want to go?” he said. She shivered sharply, standing in the full sunshine. “I don’t want to be left alone here.” “No,” he said, in his brief way. “And I don’t mean you to be here alone.” He put out a hand and pointed to a curiously shaped stone so poised that it seemed to be on the point of rolling towards them. “Do you see that? That is one of the great tetherstones. It is called the stone of sacrifice. It is so balanced that a child could make it rock, but no one could move it from its place. There are marks on that stone that scientists declare have been made by human hands, places where staples have been driven in, and so cunningly devised that prisoners chained to those staples were unharmed so long as they remained passive. But the moment they strained for freedom, the stone rocked slowly to and fro and they were crushed—gradually ground to death.” “Oh, don’t!” Frances cried. “How gruesome—how horrible!” “A devil’s paradise!” he said. “But why did you bring me here?” she protested. “Why do you tell me these dreadful things?”