Now, remarkably – and loathe as Mr. Kettle had been, at first, to admit it – this Goff had stumbled on something Mr. Watkins would, no question, have given his right arm to know about.

So it had proved unexpectedly exciting, this survey, this ley-hunt. Bit of an eye-opener. To say the least.

Until…

One morning, knowing there had to have been a stone in a particular place in Big Meadow and then digging about and finding part of it buried nearby, Mr. Kettle had got a feeling that something about this was not regular. In most areas, old stones were lost gradually, over centuries, plucked out at random, when exasperation at the damage done to a plough or a harrow had finally overcome the farmer's inbred superstition.

But at Crybbe, he was sure, it had been systematic.

Like a purge.

Mr. Kettle's excitement was dampened then by a bad feeling that just wouldn't go away. When he dug up the stone he thought he could smell it – something faintly putrid, as if he'd

unearthed a dead sheep.

And, as a man who lived by his feelings, he wondered if he ought to say something. About the purge on the stones. About the history of the Court – John Dee, Black Michael and the hangings. And about the legends, which travelled parallel to history and sometimes, if you could decode them, told you far more about what had really happened than the fusty old documents in the county archives.

Mr. Kettle, who kept his own records, was getting more and more interested in Crybbe – wishing, though, that he didn't have to be. Wishing he could ignore it. Detecting a problem here, a serious long-term problem, and wishing he could turn his back on it.