They had fought and struggled by long miles of swale and hillock, and were become mere remote atoms in the midst of a blinding wilderness, when they broke upon a little gaunt oasis--a dismal copse of good intent--stretching withered arms of welcome to them from out the whirl. This forlorn touch of nature was set at the foot of a shallow mound or tumulus that now, caked with white, looked like a huge inverted pudding-basin; and amongst the spare trunks Dennis stopped and turned a grey face to his gentlemen. “This is the place,” he said. “The place!” echoed Blythewood, looking about him bewildered. “Hurry, Whimple!” cried his master. There was a great tang of blackthorn and bramble--a little lonely thicket of it--heaped against the lower slope of the mound. From this thicket, all tossed with snow, two or three crippled beech-saplings escaped, throwing wild arms aloft as if their lower limbs were pinned in the jaws of some hidden monster in the brushwood. Thither the man made his way, and the others followed. “They are but suckers,” he said, “of an old giant trunk, the decayed butt of which lies there in the bush. It may have fallen and been removed a hundred years ago. But while it was alive its great roots were busy undermining this hillock and boring a passage into the heart of it.” He turned to his master. “For all I know, sir, _she_ was the first to discover the way and the first to penetrate to the chamber within.” “The chamber?” “Aye, gentlemen. This is an ancient barrow of the dead, and the goal of our hopes.” Luvaine pushed rudely past him. The inner character of the man seemed to reveal itself in the neighbourhood of success. “_Our_ hopes!” he drawled insolently. “Here of course is the tentative place-seeker on the very threshold of my inheritance.” “Now,” muttered Tuke to himself, “this cur snarls over his bone before the sheep is killed.” “The way in, man--the way in!” cried Luvaine, beating his hands together. “Why do you keep me outside? You can play cicerone to your damned barrow when the stone is in my pocket.” Tuke caught his servant’s eye entreating, and came peremptorily to the front. “Of course,” he said to him--“you must enter first and prepare the woman for our coming. Whatever her status, she has the right of priority here.” “A rat in a drain!” cried the soldier jeeringly. “I don’t stand on ceremony with such.” “Pardon me, sir. You owe this consideration to my servant, without whose self-sacrificing assistance you were like to go jewelless for all time.” He made a sign to Dennis. The man turned and went round about to where close by a scarce noticeable passage had been forced through the bramble. The thicket received and swallowed him to the shoulders. A dozen yards in, he faced about, waved to his master, stooped, and vanished. Luvaine, stamping in a fury of restlessness, would not yet venture upon pursuit; but as he padded it to and fro he cast quick, hateful glances at the man who had baulked him.