raced my steps.

There lay the skull.

"I rolled a stone down instead of the skull," I muttered to myself. Then
with the butt of my gun I pushed the skull over the edge of the pit and
watched it roll to the bottom; and as it struck the bottom of the pit,
Mome, my dog, suddenly whipped his tail between his legs, whimpered, and
made off across the moor.

"Mome!" I shouted, angry and astonished; but the dog only fled the
faster, and I ceased calling from sheer surprise.

"What the mischief is the matter with that dog!" I thought. He had never
before played me such a trick.

Mechanically I glanced into the pit, but I could not see the skull. I
looked down. The skull lay at my feet again, touching them.

"Good heavens!" I stammered, and struck at it blindly with my gunstock.
The ghastly thing flew into the air, whirling over and over, and rolled
again down the sides of the pit to the bottom. Breathlessly I stared at
it, then, confused and scarcely comprehending, I stepped back from the
pit, still facing it, one, ten, twenty paces, my eyes almost starting
from my head, as though I expected to see the thing roll up from the
bottom of the pit under my very gaze. At last I turned my back to the
pit and strode out across the gorse-covered moorland toward my home. As
I reached the road that winds from St. Gildas to St. Julien I gave one
hasty glance at the pit over my shoulder. The sun shone hot on the sod
about the excavation. There was something white and bare and round on
the turf at the edge of the pit. It might have been a stone; there were
plenty of them lying about.

II

When I entered my garden I saw Mome sprawling on the stone doorstep. He
eyed me sideways and flopped his tail.

"Are you not mortified, you idiot dog?" I said, looking about the upper
windows for Lys.

Mome rolled over on his back and raised one deprecating forepaw, as
though to ward off calamity.

"Don't act as though I was in the habit of beating you to death," I
said, disgusted. I had never in my life raised whip to the brute. "But
you are a fool dog," I continued. "No, you needn't come to be babied and
wept over; Lys can do that, if she insists, but I am ashamed of you, and
you can go to the devil."

Mome slunk off into the house, and I followed, mounting directly to my
wife's boudoir. It was empty.

"Where has she gone?" I said, looking hard at Mome, who had followed me.
"Oh! I see you don't know. Don't pretend you do. Come off that