is horse; and there was no sign of
other danger.

"Strange folk these," he said. "I suppose this is a trap. The
ground over it was as solid as anywhere, to all seeming. I was nigh
into it."

The pit was ten feet deep or so, and it was plain that out of it
had come what made the mound, though one could not see how. When I
looked in I saw that the ground had given way over the roof of a
passage hewn in the soft chalk, and that the opening of it must
have fallen in long ago. The twisted stems of the sparse heather on
the mound and all around it told of years, if not of long ages,
that had passed undisturbed.

"There is the trolls' house," said Erling, shrinking back somewhat.

The level sunlight showed me walls of dull gray chalk, with the
marks of the pick on them still. There was a layer of black and
white flints bedded in either wall, halfway up, and on the floor
were piled stones chosen from it carefully. I wondered who had
handled them, and when. Erling moved a little aside, and a shaft of
sunlight darted down the passage and reached its end, and showed me
those who had wrought here.

Two white skeletons sat against the wall, with a pile of flints
between them. There was a lamp hewn from chalk on the top of that,
and the stain of its smoky flame was on the wall behind it. One man
had a pick made of the brow tine of an antler, greater than any
which the red deer carry nowadays, across his knees, and another
like pick lay by the bones of the other skeleton. That one had a
broken thigh, and he seemed to bend over it in pain.

"Holy saints," said Werbode, in a whisper, "they were buried
alive!"

So they must have been; but who shall know when? They had delved in
the chalk for the flints they needed for their weapons, and their
mine had fallen in at the mouth, and they could not escape. The
stones had, doubtless, broken the leg of that one in falling. But
by the token of the deer-horn pick I take it that it was ages ago
when this happened, maybe before the days of the Welshmen whom we
found here. Yet even then, as the red sun lit up the place of their
death, we could see that the marks of their chalky hands bided on
the handles of their picks, fresh as if made yesterday.

"Come away," said Erling. "I like it not. This is over troll-like
for me."

I do not think that either of us was sorry to leave that sight. We
went one on either side of Werbode, with our arms across the
crupper of his horse, and hastened af