anew with the skill of a
navvy, this venerable scholar with letters after his name. Sometimes he
falls on his knees, burrowing with his hands in the manner of a hare, and
where his old-fashioned broadcloth touches the sides of the hole it gets
plastered with the damp earth. He continually murmurs to himself how
important, how very important, this discovery is! He draws out an
object; we wash it in the same primitive way by rubbing it with the wet
grass, and it proves to be a semi-transparent bottle of iridescent
beauty, the sight of which draws groans of luxurious sensibility from the
digger. Further and further search brings out a piece of a weapon. It
is strange indeed that by merely peeling off a wrapper of modern
accumulations we have lowered ourselves into an ancient world. Finally a
skeleton is uncovered, fairly perfect. He lays it out on the grass, bone
to its bone.

My friend says the man must have fallen fighting here, as this is no
place of burial. He turns again to the trench, scrapes, feels, till from
a corner he draws out a heavy lump--a small image four or five inches
high. We clean it as before. It is a statuette, apparently of gold, or,
more probably, of bronze-gilt--a figure of Mercury, obviously, its head
being surmounted with the petasus or winged hat, the usual accessory of
that deity. Further inspection reveals the workmanship to be of good
finish and detail, and, preserved by the limy earth, to be as fresh in
every line as on the day it left the hands of its artificer.

We seem to be standing in the Roman Forum and not on a hill in Wessex.
Intent upon this truly valuable relic of the old empire of which even
this remote spot was a component part, we do not notice what is going on
in the present world till reminded of it by the sudden renewal of the
storm. Looking up I perceive that the wide extinguisher of cloud has
again settled down upon the fortress-town, as if resting upon the edge of
the inner rampart, and shutting out the moon. I turn my back to the
tempest, still directing the light across the hole. My companion digs on
unconcernedly; he is living two thousand years ago, and despises things
of the moment as dreams. But at last he is fairly beaten, and standing
up beside me looks round on what he has done. The rays of the lantern
pass over the trench to the tall skeleton stretched upon the grass on the
other side. The beating rain has washed the bones clean and smooth, and
t