During the particularly tasteless mockery of the Kyrie Eleison his voice seemed to be shaking with an emotion which could have been suppressed laughter or, indeed, suppressed tears. Certainly not Pastis. But the strangest thing came afterwards, for his speech seemed to accelerate to a point where he was rattling off words at a speed which one would not have thought the human voice-box capable of. It went on accelerating until it had become the unnerving twitter of – yes – of a tape-recorder played at too fast a speed. This suddenly, inexplicably, broke off and we could hear the agonized rasp of his breathing. This, too, changed, as we watched and listened, and as he bowed and cramped into a spasm apparently asthmatic: wrenching coughs and retchings racked his little frame and, in between, he yelled out bits of Ezekiel: ‘… young men riding upon horses … there were her breasts pressed … there she bruised the teats of her virginity …’

George half-rose and looked at me with a question. I shook my head. This was not something to interfere with. Bit by bit the little broken priest re-assembled himself, leaned upon the altar and pursued the increasingly filthy Ritual but more and more as though the words hurt him physically. It was probably an illusion caused by the candle-flame, but it seemed to me that he was being buffeted about by something that could not have been a wind. I stole a glance at the others: George’s face was a mask of disapproval and disgust, his mouth not quite dosed. Sam, to my astonishment, displayed a face crumpled up with compassion and, if I was not mistaken, traced with tears.

I don’t know what my own face looked like.

Up at the altar, only his hands clearly visible in the pool of candlelight, Fr Tichborne jerked and swayed as his voice grew ever shriller, more frantic. I did not ask the others, afterwards, what they saw but to my mind the light seemed to thicken. I became acutely conscious, all of a sudden, of being exactly above the grave-chamber of the dolmen. Through the soles of my feet I seemed to feel a grinding crepitation as though the great slabs of the roof underground were shifting against the slabs of the side-walls. I am very much grown up, mature and not in the least superstitious, but I don’t mind admitting that I wished, just then, that I were young enough to wish that my mother were there, if you take my meaning. Not that she would have helped, of course; she wasn’t that kind of mother.