Randalls Round Read Free Page A

would be no light one; and then there was the opening of the tumulus to be done – that soil, untouched by spade or plough for centuries, to be broken by the pick until an entrance was forced into the chamber within. He ought to be off as soon as he could safely secure the tools he wanted to borrow.
    But Fate was against him. There seemed to be a constant flow of visitors to the Flaming Hand that evening – not ordinary labourers dropping in for a drink, but private visitors to the landlord, who went through to his parlour behind the bar and left by the yard at the side of the inn. It really did seem like some silly mystery story, thought Heyling impatiently; the affair in the marketplace, the landlord’s odd manner over the question of the field, and now this hushed coming and going from the landlord’s room!
    He went to his bedroom window and looked out into the yard. He wanted to make quite sure that the pick and spade were still in the open cart–shed. To his relief they were; but as he looked he got yet another shock. A man slipped out from the door of the inn kitchen and slipped across the yard into the lane that lay behind the inn. Another followed him, and a little later another; and all three had black faces. Their hands showed light, and their necks; but their faces were covered with soot, so that the features were quite indistinguishable.
    “This is too mad!” exclaimed Heyling half aloud. “Jove, I didn’t expect to run into this sort of farce when I came here. Wonder if all old Cross’s mysterious visitors have had black faces? Anyway, I wish they’d buck up and clear out. I may not have another chance to go to that mound if I don’t get off soon.”
    The queer happenings at the inn now appeared to him solely as obstacles to his own movements. If their import came into his mind at all, it was to make him wonder whether there were any play like a mummers’ show which the village kept up; or games, perhaps, like those played in Scotland at Hallowe’en… By Jove! That probably was the explanation. It was All Hallows’ Eve! Why couldn’t they buck up and get on with it, anyhow?
    His patience was not to be tried much longer. Soon after nine the noises ceased; but to make doubly sure, Heyling did not leave his room till ten had struck from Randalls church.
    He got cautiously out of his bedroom window and landed softly on the cobbles of the yard. The tools still leaned against the wall of the open shed – trusting man, Mr. Cross, of the Flaming Hand! The shed where his cycle stood was locked, though, and he swore softly at the loss of time this would mean in getting to the field. It would take him twenty–five minutes to walk.
    As a matter of fact, it did not take him quite so long, for impatience gave him speed. The country looked very beautiful under the slow–rising hunter’s moon. The long bare lines of the fields swept up to the ridges, black against the dark serene blue of the night sky. The air was cool and clean, with the smell of frost in it. Heyling, hurrying along the rough white road, was dimly conscious of the purity and peace of the night.
    At last the field came in sight, empty and still in the cold moonlight. Only the mound, black as a tomb, broke the flood of light. The gate was wide open, and even in his haste this struck Heyling as odd.
    “I could have sworn I shut that gate,” he said to himself. “I remember thinking I must, in case anyone spotted I’d been in. It just shows that people don’t avoid the place as much as old Cross would like me to believe.”
    He decided to attack the barrow on the side away from the road, lest any belated labourer should pass by. He walked round the mound, looking for a thin spot in its defence of thorn and hazel bushes; but there was none. The scrub formed a thick belt all round the barrow, and was so high that he could not see the top of the mound at all. The confounded stuff might grow half–way up the tumulus for all he could see.
    He