There May Be Danger Read Online Free PDF Page A

conclusion, and had gone to South America to console himself among the remains of Incas. Kate still occasionally had letters from him, though she had not had one for a long time now, and still, more than occasionally, found herself thinking about him.
    A new and gruesome thought struck her.
    â€œI suppose,” she hesitated, “there aren’t any chambered barrows in this part of the world? I mean,” she explained as Mrs. Davis looked at a loss, “big tumps, long-shaped, with entrances and stone passages inside where people can just crawl along?”
    â€œI never heard of any tumps with passages! They are just round tumps, with grass over them, and some has trees growing on them. Some is flatter than others, and some has a ditch and a bank round the bottom of them. Perhaps that iss what you are thinking of?”
    â€œNo, but stone tunnels through them, that you can crawl into,” said Kate, who had been suddenly afflicted with a horrible vision of an adventurous small boy, miles away from human kind, on the wild stretches of the hills, finding the bramble-hidden entrance to a great long-barrow, crawling down the dank earthy passage, trapped by a falling stone. The stone might not have been touched by human hand since the builder’s had first placed it there in days before Julius Caesar was born, and the centuries in which rabbits had burrowed and foxes dug their earths might have undermined that builder’s work, to make the stone fall at the first renewal of a human touch. The child would shout, and cry, but not for long. And the larks would sing, and the wild honey bees hum over the blackberries and nobody, nobody would ever know.
    Perhaps the tenor of Kate’s dark imaginings showed in her face, for Mrs. Davis subdued her high decisive voice into a lower key when she answered: 
    â€œNo, there’s no tunnels that I ever heard of. There iss a tunnel at Mr. Atkin’s farm, they say, but there iss no tump there. There iss a lot of old ruins that visitors goes to see, and people say there was once an old tunnel in the cellar that ran under the hill towards an old castle that used to be there in history times, but nobody hass ever seen this tunnel that I know of. Mr. Atkins iss a queer man, he does not like visitors at Llanhalo.”
    â€œLlanhalo!” cried Kate, in joyful surprise. “Not Llanhalo Abbey Farm?”
    â€œYess, that iss the place.”
    â€œOh, good! Is it far from Hastry? A Land-Army friend of mine works there!”
    Mrs. Davis poked her husband sharply in the back.
    â€œHow far away iss Llanhalo from Hastry, George? The Land-Army young lady that works for Gideon Atkins is a friend of this young lady here!”
    â€œOh, ah, about five-and-a-half mile, I shouldn’t wonder. Yes, five or six mile, pretty near.”
    Mr. Davis turned his head and looked at Kate with a sort of foxy humour.
    â€œAnd how does the young lady like working for Gideon Atkins, Miss? Oh ah?”
    He spoke with real curiosity, and Kate, glancing at his wife, saw that she was waiting, brightly intent behind her round child-like spectacles, for Kate’s answer. Kate could not remember that Aminta had ever expressed any sentiments with regard to her employer. Aminta was not interested in human beings, only in cows and horses and other inarticulate animals. Mr. and Mrs. Davis, when she explained this, seemed both disappointed and sceptical.
    â€œAnd how long’s her been at Llanhalo, Missie?”
    â€œNearly a year.”
    â€œWell, well her must be a stout girl! Does her get enough to eat, oh ah?” inquired Mr. Davis with jocularity. “Reckon that’s why Atkins picked a land-girl, missus, her wouldn’t eat as much as a man!”
    â€œLlanhalo’s a draughty old melancholy house, though Miss Atkins is for ever scrubbing her fingers away on the floors,” said Mrs. Davis, who seemed loth to believe that Kate had no second-hand titbits