-THE OLD MEN" 



KNOW a grey ring of stone that lies 

 between two hills, shines there in summer 

 sunlight, glimmers through mist and rain, 

 vanishes awhile at the time of snow. It is 

 uplifted under the sky ; its ruins, despite their age, are 

 very perfect ; within its embrace lie four-and-twenty 

 homes of the Neolithic or later stone-men, who 

 flourished here before history has anything to tell of 

 England. Seen from the crest of Hameldon on 

 Dartmoor, this venerable settlement writes upon the 

 heather and autumnal furze its story of a past now 

 buried in time beyond power of probing. All chroni- 

 cles of Grimspound must rest upon conjecture, yet the 

 modern antiquary, with enthusiasm for his strength and 

 imagination to light him, has wrought here and lifted 

 the veil a little. By the granite foundations of their 

 homes, by their walls raised for defence against man 

 or beast, by their mystic circles still standing on 

 lonely heaths, by their alignments and monoliths, and 

 by the places where they laid their dead, the races of 

 old time may be brought a little nearer, and their 

 story shadowed in this record of plutonian rocks. 

 These fragments, indeed, cannot with certainty 



M 161 



