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her guest.
    â€œIn a sense, I suppose, there’s got to be selection,” her guest admitted. “If I find nothing new in the cairn, then the everything that is the cairn might be deemed nothing much by Colonel Mackintosh. In that sense, everything might be nothing. But—to say that everything is in fact nothing——” He was amused and plucked an elusive piece of cigarette tobacco from his lower lip.
    â€œDo you really expect to find something new?” asked Mrs Sidbury.
    â€œOf course,” he answered. “I hope to find something quite astonishing.”
    â€œSplendid! May I ask—what?”
    â€œAh!” Grant was mysterious. “The truth is,” he went on confidentially, “I never do open anything—much less a cairn—but I find something, if I’m looking for it. That’s the whole secret.”
    â€œYou find what you look for?” asked Martin.
    â€œYes,” replied Grant at once, “and I don’t place it there beforehand, actually or metaphysically.”
    Martin glanced at him and smiled slowly. “For instance?”
    â€œWe had been discussing the possible proceedings when a place like the cairn up there was being ceremonially used, and a colleague asked me, ‘Have you read the Iliad lately?’ The question stuck in my head. So one night I opened the book—at the last paragraph. It’s the description, you know, of the burial of Hector. They burnt his body on an enormous pyre of wood; then, when they wanted to get at his bones, there were still burning spots so they subdued these with bright wine. Then it tells how his comrades gathered his white bones, with tears running down their cheeks, and placed them in a golden urn, wrapped in soft purple , and placed the urn in a grave and piled over it a huge cairn of stones; and after that they went and feasted right well in noble feast at the palace of Priam.”
    â€œHow remarkable! And do you really think something like that happened—up there at the Stone Circle?” asked Mrs Sidbury.
    â€œWith the noble feast afterwards down here? Who knows?” said Grant.
    â€œThe same period?” asked Martin.
    â€œIt might be, if not the same Age. We were always a few centuries behind. The Iliad is clearly the height of the Bronze Age. The cairn up there was the Age before, the Neolithic. But whether the axe-head was made of polished stone or bronze may not imply a vast difference in the human head. I am inclined to think not, for reasons which I could elaborate.”
    â€œYou could?”
    â€œYes, I could,” replied Grant at once. “I crossed over the Highlands from east to west last time I was up, and saw on the east coast a four-plough tractor in operation and on the west a foot-plough that, but for its iron tip, might have come straight from the Stone Age.”
    â€œTell me,” said Mrs Sidbury, “do you really expect to find a golden urn?”
    Grant laughed, his mounting intensity at once broken. “I may find a pot—but perhaps not of gold!”
    â€œBut, as you said, who knows?”
    â€œWho knows,” he repeated.
    â€œSome more coffee?”
    â€œNo, thank you. And I really must go now.”
    â€œWell, we mustn’t keep you. But please do look in and tell us how you are getting on. I am quite thrilled. And if we can possibly help——” She looked at her brother.
    He nodded just perceptibly.
    As he went on his way towards the houses of Clachar, Grant knew that it was something far other than a cairn that worried Martin. Colonel Mackintosh had said that Martin’s father, for some local or sentimental reason, had hoped that no one would press for the cairn to be opened up, but that with young Martin it was different. It was! The fellow merely doesn’t want anyone around, thought Grant, but I’m here and to blazes with him! It was a lovely evening for such an invigorating and