ree-crested crags, ravines with brawling
brooks, stretches of heather-clad moor, banks of faded bracken, rugged
rocks and stony hill-crests were spread on the one hand, while to the
west lay a distant chain of lakes, embosomed in meadows green as
emerald, and reflecting the pale autumn sky in their smooth expanse. At
the top of the first fell, Miss Todd called a halt. They had reached
number one of the objects she had set in the day's programme. It was a
pre-historic cromlech--three gigantic stones reared in the form of a
table by those old inhabitants of our island whose customs and modes of
worship are lost in the mists of antiquity. The storms and snows of many
thousand years sweeping round it had slightly displaced the cap stone,
but it stood otherwise intact, a grey, hoary monument to the toil of the
short, dark neolithic race who once hunted on these self-same fells. The
girls crowded round the cromlech curiously. It was large enough for four
of them to sit underneath, and several crammed in as an experiment.

"Was it an altar?" asked Stuart.

"The altar theory is exploded now," said Miss Todd. "It is generally
recognized that they were burial-places of great chiefs. The body would
be placed inside, with stone weapons and drinking-cups, and any other
articles the man had loved when he was alive. Then a great heap of
stones and earth would be piled over and round it, to keep out the
wolves which were the terror of early man. The weather, and perhaps
farmers, have taken away the mound, and laid bare the cromlech; but
look! here is one that is almost in its natural position."

The girls turned, and saw close by a rocky mound that jutted from among
the crags. In its side was a small opening, just large enough to squeeze
through. Miss Todd had brought candle and matches, and personally
conducted relays of girls into the chamber within. They went curiously
or timorously as the case might be.

"Is there a skeleton inside? I don't know whether I _dare_," shivered
Tattie. "It's like going into a grave, and I'm scared to death."

"Don't be silly!" said Geraldine, who, with Loveday and Hilary, was
making her exit. "There's nothing inside it. It's only like a cave."

"You're sure bogeys won't catch my legs?"

"Stop outside, if you're afraid."

"It's like a fairy-tale, and going into the gnome's hill," fluttered
Magsie.

Everybody was determined to have a peep, and even Tattie mustered up
sufficient courage to screw