the Heliolithic culture. It had revived their interest in Avebury and Stonehenge. The doctor moreover had been reading Hippisley Cox’s Green Roads of England.
Neither gentleman had ever seen Avebury, but Dr. Martineau had once visited Stonehenge.
“Avebury is much the oldest,” said the doctor. “They must have made Silbury Hill long before 2000 b.c. It may be five thousand years old or even more. It is the most important historical relic in the British Isles. And the most neglected.”
They exchanged archæological facts. The secret places of the heart rested until the afternoon.
Then Sir Richmond saw fit to amplify his confessions in one particular.
§ 2
The doctor and his patient had discovered a need for exercise as the morning advanced. They had walked by the road to Marlow and had lunched at a riverside inn, returning after a restful hour in an arbour on the lawn of this place to tea at Maidenhead. It was as they returned that Sir Richmond took up the thread of their overnight conversation again.
“In the night,” he said, “I was thinking over
