When they saw me the one with the hammer touched his greasy cap.
"Might we make so bold, sir," he said, "as the ask the way to
Stonehenge?"
"We never ought to go," mumbled the other plaintively. "There's
not more than twenty as knows, but...."
I was bicycling there myself to see the place so I pointed out the
way and rode on at once, for there was something so utterly servile
about them both that I did not care for their company. They seemed
by their wretched mien to have been persecuted or utterly neglected
for many years, I thought that very likely they had done long terms
of penal servitude.
When I came to Stonehenge I saw a group of about a score of men
standing among the stones. They asked me with some solemnity if
I was expecting anyone, and when I said No they spoke to me no
more. It was three miles back where I left those strange old men,
but I had not been in the stone circle long when they appeared,
coming with great strides along the road. When they saw them all
the people took off their hats and acted very strangely, and I saw
that they had a goat which they led up then to the old altar stone.
And the two old men came up with their hammer and spear and
began apologizing plaintively for the liberty they had taken in coming
back to that place, and all the people knelt on the grass before them.
And then still kneeling they killed the goat by the altar, and when the
two old men saw this they came up with many excuses and eagerly
sniffed the blood.
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