Here it is."
He handed over a small flint, tapering to a point, and about three
inches in length.
Dyson's face blazed up with excitement as he took the thing from
Vaughan.
"Certainly," he said, after a moment's pause, "you have some
curious neighbours in your country. I hardly think they can harbour
any designs on your punch-bowl. Do you know this is a flint arrowhead
of vast antiquity, and not only that, but an arrowhead of a unique
kind? I have seen specimens from all parts of the world, but there
are features about this thing that are quite peculiar." He laid down
his pipe, and took out a book from a drawer.
"We shall just have time to catch the 5.45 to Castletown," he
said.
Mr. Dyson drew in a long breath of the air of the hills and felt
all the enchantment of the scene about him. It was very early
morning, and he stood on the terrace in the front of the house.
Vaughan's ancestor had built on the lower slope of a great hill,
in the shelter of a deep and ancient wood that gathered on three
sides about the house, and on the fourth side, the southwest, the
land fell gently away and sank to the valley, where a brook wound in
and out in mystic esses, and the dark and gleaming alders tracked the
stream's course to the eye. On the terrace in the sheltered place no
wind blew, and far beyond, the trees were still. Only one sound broke
in upon the silence, and Dyson heard the noise of the brook singing
far below, the song of clear and shining water rippling over the
stones, whispering and murmuring as it sank to dark deep pools.
Across the stream, just below the house, rose a grey stone bridge,
vaulted and buttressed, a fragment of the Middle Ages, and then
beyond the bridge the hills rose again, vast and rounded like
bastions, covered here and there with dark woods and thickets of
undergrowth, but the heights were all bare of trees, showing only
grey turf and patches of bracken, touched here and there with the
gold of fading fronds; Dyson looked to the north and south, and still
he saw the wall of the hills, and the ancient woods, and the stream
drawn in and out between them; all grey and dim with morning mist
beneath a grey sky in a hushed and haunted air.
Mr. Vaughan's voice broke in upon the silence.
"I thought you would be too tired to be about so early," he said.
"I see you are admiring the view. It is very pretty, isn't it, though
I suppose old Meyrick Vaughan didn't think much about the scenery
when he built the house. A queer grey, old place, isn't it?"
"Yes, and how it fits into the surroundings; it seems of a piece
with the grey hills and the grey bridge below."
"I am afraid I have brought you down on false pretences, Dyson,"
said Vaughan, as they began to walk up and down the terrace. "I have
been to the place, and there is not a sign of anything this
morning."
"Ah, indeed. Well, suppose we go round together."
They walked across the lawn and went by a path through the ilex
shrubbery to the back of the house. There Vaughan pointed out the
track leading down to the valley and up to the heights above the
wood, and presently they stood beneath the garden wall, by the
door.
"Here, you see, it was," said Vaughan, pointing to a spot on the
turf. "I was standing just where you are now that morning I first saw
the flints."
"Yes, quite so. That morning it was the Army, as I call it; then
the Bowl, then the Pyramid, and, yesterday, the Half moon. What a
queer old stone that is," he went on, pointing to a block of
limestone rising out of the turf just beneath the wall. 'It looks
like a sort of dwarf pillar, but I suppose it is natural."
"Oh, yes, I think so. I imagine it was brought here, though, as we
stand on the red sandstone. No doubt it was used as a foundation
stone for some older building."
"Very likely," Dyson was peering about him attentively, looking
from the ground to the wall, and from the wall to the deep wood that
hung almost over the garden and made the place dark even in the
morning.
"Look here," said Dyson at length, "it is certainly a case of
children this time. Look at that.".He was bending down and staring at
the dull red surface of the mellowed bricks of the wall.
Vaughan came up and looked hard where Dyson's finger was pointing,
and could scarcely distinguish a faint mark in deeper red.
"What is it?" he said. "I can make nothing of it."
"Look a little more closely. Don't you see it is an attempt to
draw the human eye?"
"Ah, now I see what you mean. My sight is not very sharp. Yes, so
it is, it is meant for an eye, no doubt, as you say. I thought the
children learnt drawing at school."
"Well, it is an odd eye enough. Do you notice the peculiar almond
shape; almost like the eye of a Chinaman?"
Dyson looked meditatively at the work of the undeveloped artist,
and scanned the wall again, going down on his knees in the minuteness
of his inquisition.
"I should like very much," he said at length, "to know how a child
in this out of the way place could have any idea of the shape of the
Mongolian eye. You see the average child has a very distinct
impression of the subject; he draws a circle, or something like a
circle, and put a dot in the centre. I don't think any child imagines
that the eye is really made like that; it's just a convention of
infantile art. But this almond-shaped thing puzzles me extremely.
Perhaps it may be derived from a gilt Chinaman on a tea-canister in
the grocer's shop.
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