“Holy saints,” said Werbode, in a whisper, “they were buried alive!”

So they must have been; but who shall know when?  They had delved in the chalk for the flints they needed for their weapons, and their mine had fallen in at the mouth, and they could not escape.  The stones had, doubtless, broken the leg of that one in falling.  But by the token of the deer-horn pick I take it that it was ages ago when this happened, maybe before the days of the Welshmen whom we found here.  Yet even then, as the red sun lit up the place of their death, we could see that the marks of their chalky hands bided on the handles of their picks, fresh as if made yesterday.

“Come away,” said Erling.  “I like it not.  This is over troll-like for me.”

I do not think that either of us was sorry to leave that sight.  We went one on either side of Werbode, with our arms across the crupper of his horse, and hastened after the thane and his charge, who were half a mile away by this time, waiting for us.  But we never heard any elvish arrow whistling after us, or saw any more of the uncouth folk.

I told him as we went on of the pit we had seen, and how Werbode thought it was a trap.  Whereon the housecarl laughed a little, and said that it was but an ancient flint working.  The men who had fallen on the party were the descendants of those who had made it.  The flints had been worked here from time untold even till now, and those who worked them today had all the craft of their forebears.

“Why, then, they went into their workings when they fled from us,” I said.

“No doubt, thane.  Where else should they go?” he said.  “They came out of them on us.”

“I wonder you brought your master and the lady across this heath at all,” I said “it is a perilous place.”

“It grew late, and it is the nearest way,” said the man humbly.  “Nor did I ever hear that the flintknappers, as we call them, harmed any.”

“Nor did I,” said the old thane.  “It is somewhat fresh to me.  Maybe parties like ours have passed here so often during this last week that at last the sight of gold and jewels has roused them to try to take from a weak band.”

So we talked and went on as fast as we might, all the while keeping a lookout around us.  The lady had, in some way which is beyond me altogether, set herself in such array again that I, for one, could hardly tell that aught had been awry on her; and I wondered that Werbode’s red cloak had never seemed so graceful a garment on his broad shoulders.  But she said little or nothing, leaning her head on her father as she rode with her arm round him, save when we asked her if all was well.  I think she was very tired.

And so at last, with no more adventure, we came to the well-worn track which we were making for, and by-and-by, in the May moonlight, saw the twinkling lights of Thetford town, seeming to welcome us into the shelter of its protecting ramparts.  I was glad to see them; but I had enjoyed that long tramp back, for some reason which was not plain to me, unless it had been the talk of the old thane and my comrades, and the sense of escape from danger.