so, they must be the
lingering air-borne vibrations of conversations uttered at least fifteen
hundred years ago. The attention is attracted from mere nebulous
imaginings about yonder spot by a real moving of something close at hand.

I recognize by the now moderate flashes of lightning, which are sheet-
like and nearly continuous, that it is the gradual elevation of a small
mound of earth. At first no larger than a man's fist it reaches the
dimensions of a hat, then sinks a little and is still. It is but the
heaving of a mole who chooses such weather as this to work in from some
instinct that there will be nobody abroad to molest him. As the fine
earth lifts and lifts and falls loosely aside fragments of burnt clay
roll out of it--clay that once formed part of cups or other vessels used
by the inhabitants of the fortress.

The violence of the storm has been counterbalanced by its transitoriness.
From being immersed in well-nigh solid media of cloud and hail shot with
lightning, I find myself uncovered of the humid investiture and left bare
to the mild gaze of the moon, which sparkles now on every wet grass-blade
and frond of moss.

But I am not yet inside the fort, and the delayed ascent of the third and
last escarpment is now made. It is steeper than either. The first was a
surface to walk up, the second to stagger up, the third can only be
ascended on the hands and toes. On the summit obtrudes the first
evidence which has been met with in these precincts that the time is
really the nineteenth century; it is in the form of a white notice-board
on a post, and the wording can just be discerned by the rays of the
setting moon:

CAUTION.--Any Person found removing Relics, Skeletons, Stones, Pottery,
Tiles, or other Material from this Earthwork, or cutting up the Ground,
will be Prosecuted as the Law directs.

Here one observes a difference underfoot from what has gone before:
scraps of Roman tile and stone chippings protrude through the grass in
meagre quantity, but sufficient to suggest that masonry stood on the
spot. Before the eye stretches under the moonlight the interior of the
fort. So open and so large is it as to be practically an upland plateau,
and yet its area lies wholly within the walls of what may be designated
as one building. It is a long-violated retreat; all its corner-stones,
plinths, and architraves were carried away to build neighbouring villages
even before mediaeval or modern history