Hocart would not listen. When the quarrymen started work, every hammer stroke rang out at the Vale church nearly a mile away, as if the men were working in the churchyard itself. Hocart told them to carry on. The stone was cut up, the house rose without accident, and he laughed at the old men.
On the day the carpenters finished, two maidservants, or a servant man and a maid in other versions, were sent early to clean the house ready for the family. At eight in the morning a fire broke out and spread so fast that they could not escape and died in the flames. By noon the house was a heap of smoking ruins, and the cause was never found. Part of the stone had been cut into paving slabs for England and the rest broken for road metal, and both cargoes were shipped that year in two vessels in which Hocart held shares. Both were lost at sea. Hocart moved to Alderney and his new house there burned down. Returning to Guernsey, as his ship came close to land, part of the rigging fell and fractured his skull, killing him instantly.
MacCulloch followed this with another cromlech curse, the legend of Sir Richard of La Haye du Puits, and Carey added a Breton saying that the spirits who built the dolmens will take revenge on anyone who destroys them. The Roque qui Sonne story is unusual in that it came from the dead man's own nephew. The exact site is not marked, so the map point is approximate.
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