, he quite
rightly concluded, be on the site of the preceptory he had promised to
look at. It seemed not unlikely to reward the spade of the explorer;
enough of the foundations was probably left at no great depth to throw a
good deal of light on the general plan. He remembered vaguely that the
Templars, to whom this site had belonged, were in the habit of building
round churches, and he thought a particular series of the humps or mounds
near him did appear to be arranged in something of a circular form. Few
people can resist the temptation to try a little amateur research in a
department quite outside their own, if only for the satisfaction of
showing how successful they would have been had they only taken it up
seriously. Our Professor, however, if he felt something of this mean
desire, was also truly anxious to oblige Mr Disney. So he paced with care
the circular area he had noticed, and wrote down its rough dimensions in
his pocket-book. Then he proceeded to examine an oblong eminence which
lay east of the centre of the circle, and seemed to his thinking likely
to be the base of a platform or altar. At one end of it, the northern, a
patch of the turf was gone--removed by some boy or other creature _ferae
naturae_. It might, he thought, be as well to probe the soil here for
evidences of masonry, and he took out his knife and began scraping away
the earth. And now followed another little discovery: a portion of soil
fell inward as he scraped, and disclosed a small cavity. He lighted one
match after another to help him to see of what nature the hole was, but
the wind was too strong for them all. By tapping and scratching the sides
with his knife, however, he was able to make out that it must be an
artificial hole in masonry. It was rectangular, and the sides, top, and
bottom, if not actually plastered, were smooth and regular. Of course it
was empty. No! As he withdrew the knife he heard a metallic clink, and
when he introduced his hand it met with a cylindrical object lying on the
floor of the hole. Naturally enough, he picked it up, and when he brought
it into the light, now fast fading, he could see that it, too, was of
man's making--a metal tube about four inches long, and evidently of some
considerable age.

By the time Parkins had made sure that there was nothing else in this odd
receptacle, it was too late and too dark for him to think of undertaking
any further search. What he had done had proved so unexpectedly