ne bit."

"Did it up!" exclaimed the father of the family in the tone of one
accustomed to find a gentle sport in the intellectual frailties of his
womenkind.

"It's just the bones of a place. They hung things round it. They draped
it."

"But what things?" asked Sir Richmond.

"Oh! they had things all right. Skins perhaps. Mats of rushes. Bast
cloth. Fibre of all sorts. Wadded stuff."

"Stonehenge draped! It's really a delightful idea;" said the father of
the family, enjoying it.

"It's quite a possible one," said Sir Richmond.

"Or they may have used wicker," the young lady went on, undismayed. She
seemed to concede a point. "Wicker IS likelier."

"But surely," said the father of the family with the expostulatory voice
and gesture of one who would recall erring wits to sanity, "it is
far more impressive standing out bare and noble as it does. In lonely
splendour."

"But all this country may have been wooded then," said Sir Richmond. "In
which case it wouldn't have stood out. It doesn't stand out so very much
even now."

"You came to it through a grove," said the young lady, eagerly picking
up the idea.

"Probably beech," said Sir Richmond.

"Which may have pointed to the midsummer sunrise," said Dr. Martineau,
unheeded.

"These are NOVEL ideas," said the father of the family in the reproving
tone of one who never allows a novel idea inside HIS doors if he can
prevent it.

"Well," said the young lady, "I guess there was some sort of show here
anyhow. And no human being ever had a show yet without trying to shut
people out of it in order to make them come in. I guess this was covered
in all right. A dark hunched old place in a wood. Beech stems, smooth,
like pillars. And they came to it at night, in procession, beating
drums, and scared half out of their wits. They came in THERE and went
round the inner circle with their torches. And so they were shown. The
torches were put out and the priests did their mysteries. Until dawn
broke. That is how they worked it."

"But even you can't tell what the show was, V.V." said the lady in grey,
who was standing now at Dr. Martineau's elbow.

"Something horrid," said Anthony's younger sister to her elder in a
stage whisper.

"BLUGGY," agreed Anthony's elder sister to the younger, in a noiseless
voice that certainly did not reach father. "SQUEALS!...."

This young lady who was addressed as "V.V." was perhaps one or two and
twenty, Dr. Martineau thought,--he w