"It may be the one Maguennoc touched and burnt his hand with."
"Oh, I'm not afraid of anything!" Vorski declared taking hold of the rod.
It was a leaden sceptre, very clumsily made, but nevertheless revealing a certain artistic intention. Round the handle was a snake, here encrusted in the lead, there standing out in relief. Its huge, disproportionate head formed the pommel and was studded with silver nails and little green pebbles transparent as emeralds.
He handled the thing and examined it all over with respectful awe; and he soon observed that the pommel shifted almost loose. He fingered it, turned it to the left, to the right, until at length it gave a click and the snake's head became unfastened.
There was a space inside, containing a stone, a tiny, pale-red stone, with yellow streaks that looked like veins of gold.
"It's the God-Stone, it's the God-Stone!" said Vorski, greatly agitated.
"Don't touch it!" Conrad repeated, filled with alarm.
"What burnt Maguennoc will not burn me," replied Vorski, solemnly.
And, in bravado, swelling with pride and delight, he kept the mysterious stone in the hollow of his hand, which he clenched with all his strength:
"Let it burn me! I will let it! Let it sear my flesh! I shall be glad if it will!"
Conrad made a sign to him and put his finger to his lips.
"What's the matter?" asked Vorski. "Do you hear anything?"
What they heard was a rhythmical, measured sound, which rose and fell and made a sort of irregular music.
"Why, it's close by!" mumbled Vorski. "It sounds as if it were in the room."
It was in the room, as they soon learnt for certain; and there was no doubt that the sound was very like a snore.
Conrad, who had ventured on this suggestion, was the first to laugh at it; but Vorski said:
"Upon my word, I'm inclined to think you're right. It _is_ a snore . . . . There must be some one here then?"
"It comes from over there," said Otto, "from that corner in the dark."
The light did not extend beyond the menhirs. Behind each of them opened a small, shadowy chapel. Vorski turned his lantern into one of these and at once uttered a cry of amazement:
"Some one . . . yes . . . there is some one . . . . Look . . . ."
The two accomplices came forward. On a heap of rubble, piled up in an angle of the wall, a man lay sleeping, an old man with a white beard and long white hair. A thousand wrinkles furrowed the skin of his face and hands. There were blue rings round his closed eyelids. At least a century must have passed over his head.