Hearing this sound, Wolf glanced sideways at his young rival, and an unexpected flicker of sympathy for that water-rat profile ran through him.

They crossed the field in silence; and the thought that he was going to meet Mr. Urquhart recalled to Wolf’s mind that mysterious aperture in the side of Redfern’s grave. Could it be possible that there were in the village people so crazed by remorse for this boy’s death that they actually had been making mad attempts to disinter his bones? Such, at any rate, from what Gerda hinted, would not have struck these Dorsetshire gossips as impossible. But impossible, of course, it was! It was one of those morbidly monstrous fancies that, as he knew well from the Squire’s own collection of weird documents, did sometimes run the round of these West Country villages, passing from tavern to tavern, and growing more and more sinister as it went. Something in this quarter of the land, as soaked with legends as it was with cider-juice, seemed to lend itself to such tales!