'Oh… that thing.'

The old girl was about a hundred yards down the field, separated from the hedge now, blackened against the light, no more than three feet tall. But she was there, that was the point. In the right place.

'Yes,' Mr. Kettle said. 'That thing.'

It was no good, he didn't like her. Even if she'd proved him right he didn't like the feeling coming off her, the smell that you could smell from a good distance, although not really.

'Is it a tree stump?' And then, 'Hey, you're kidding, it can't be!' The little eyes suddenly sparking. He'd be ruthless and probably devious in his business, this feller, but he had this enthusiastic innocence about him that you couldn't altogether dislike.

'Jeez,' Goff said. 'I thought they'd all gone!'

'Why don't you go over and have a look at 'er?' Mr. Kettle put down his bag and sat on it under the hedge and patted the grass so that Arnold, his dog, would sit down, too. And they both sat and watched this bulky, bearded bloke making his ungainly way across the tufted meadow. Impatient, stumbling, because he'd thought they'd all gone, the old stones of Crybbe…

Mr. Kettle, too, had believed they'd all gone, until this morning when they'd finally let him into the field for the first time and he'd located the line and walked slowly along it, letting it talk to him, a low murmur.

And then the tone had altered, strengthened, calling out to him, the way they did. 'I'm here, Henry, the only standing stone left standing within a mile of Crybbe.'

Or vibrations to that effect. As megaliths went, she wasn't impressive, but she hadn't lost her voice. Not a voice he liked, though; he felt it was high and keening and travelled on a thin, dry wind.

But it proved he hadn't lost his capacity to receive. The faculty.

'Still there, then, Arnold. Every time I goes out I reckon it isn't bound to work any more,' He scratched the dog's head. 'But it's still there, boy.'