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She believed there was more in this than a chance resemblance; for to a Breton girl the supernatural world is very real: and she had no doubt that the spirit of Paul's father haunted the stone that was so like his bodily form, and that on the night when he was drowned, the dumb menhir had found voice, and had spoken to her mother in his name.
I leaned on the menhir to try to catch the white robes that swirled below me, and then I felt a heave and quaking in the turf on which I knelt as I reached over the black water, and Howel cried out and dragged me back roughly for a long fathom. The menhir was falling.
But I suppose that the terror of that strange place will still lie on all the countryside, and I hold that since the day when the wizards of old time reared the menhir on that which it covered, with cruel rites and terrible words that have bided in the minds of men as a terror will bide, no man but such as Morfed has dared to pry into that valley lest the ancient curse should fall on them the curse of the Druid who would hide his secrets.
Then from the narrow portal of the glen passed quickly, looking neither to the right nor left, a tall man, followed by two others, and they seemed not to see us, but went straight toward the menhir along that path I thought I had traced, and Howel and I stared at them, speechless and motionless, for the like of them we had never seen.
In North Africa, for example, we know that the erection of dolmens continued into the early iron age; many of the Indian tombs are clearly late, and the corridor-tombs of Japan can be safely attributed in part at least to the Christian era. With what purpose were the megalithic monuments erected? The most simple example, the menhir or upright stone, may have served many purposes.
A few yards further on lay the senseless form of the Breton horseman, and it was clear to Annette that Jean of Kerdual had purposely stayed the rider by throwing the shadow across the road to startle his horse. But a new exhilaration had taken possession of Annette's whole body and mind. She feared the menhir no longer: its power over her was gone.
Oaths sworn in or near a megalithic monument have a peculiar sanctity. In Scotland as late as the year A.D. 1438 "John off Erwyne and Will Bernardson swor on the Hirdmane Stein before oure Lorde ye Erie off Orknay and the gentiless off the cuntre." Many of the monuments are endowed by the credulous with life. The menhir du Champ Dolent sinks an inch every hundred years.
In the very midst of this lawn was a round pool of black, still water, and across on the far side of that was set a menhir, one of those tall standing stones that forgotten men of old were wont to rear for rites that are past. It was on the very edge of the pool, as it seemed, and was taller than any I had seen on our hills.
Or in that distorting medium of the mist, changing all things, he imagined that he trod an infinite desolate plain, abandoned from ages, but circled and encircled with dolmen and menhir that loomed out at him, gigantic, terrible.
"Morfed," I said, therefore "if it is indeed the last hour for you, make amends for another ill by telling me where Owen is, and I will do what you ask me, if it is what I may do honestly and as a Christian." "Grave me a cross on yonder menhir in token that the days of the Druid are numbered," he said softly, sitting down on the stone with his head bowed, as if in deadly faintness.
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