, and then
sank back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again.
Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression in his face.

"Queer place, the moor!" said he.

"But what is it?"

"The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for
its prey. I've heard it once or twice before, but never quite so
loud."

I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge
swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing
stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which
croaked loudly from a tor behind us.

"You are an educated man. You don't believe such nonsense as
that?" said I. "What do you think is the cause of so strange a
sound?"

"Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It's the mud settling, or the
water rising, or something."

"No, no, that was a living voice."

"Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?"

"No, I never did."

"It's a very rare bird--practically extinct--in England now, but
all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be
surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last
of the bitterns."

"It's the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my
life."

"Yes, it's rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hill-
side yonder. What do you make of those?"

The whole steep slope was covered with gray circular rings of
stone, a score of them at least.

"What are they? Sheep-pens?"

"No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man
lived thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived
there since, we find all his little arrangements exactly as he
left them. These are his wigwams with the roofs off. You can even
see his hearth and his couch if you have the curiosity to go
inside.

"But it is quite a town. When was it inhabited?"

"Neolithic man--no date."

"What did he do?"

"He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for
tin when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look
at the great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes,
you will find some very singular points about the moor, Dr.
Watson. Oh, excuse me an instant! It is surely Cyclopides."

A small fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an
instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed
in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the
great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant,
bounding from tuft to tuft be