and eke the
outline of the club beside him, and left the figure there to commemorate
their valour and the loss of their flocks. Some three hundred feet long
it was, I think, with a club the length of a tall pine-tree. In any
case, the Tarn Regis lad who would excel in feats of strength had but to
spend the night of Midsummer's Eve in the crook of the giant's arm (as
some one or two did every year), and other youths of the countryside
could never stand a chance with him.

I paused on the ledge below the barrow beside a ruined shepherd's hut,
and recalled the fact that here my father had unearthed sundry fragments
of stone and pieces of implements which the Dorchester Museum curator
had welcomed as very early British relics. They went back, I remembered,
to long before the Roman period; to days possibly more remote than those
of ancient Barebarrow himself. If you refer to a good map you will find
this spot surrounded by such indications of immemorial antiquity as
"Tumuli," "British Village," and the like. The Roman encampment on the
other side of Davenham Minster was modernity itself, I thought, compared
with this ancient haunt of the neolithic forerunners of the early
Briton; this resting-place of men whose doings were a half-forgotten
story many centuries before the birth of Julius Caesar.

I sat down on the grassy ledge and looked out across the lichen-covered
roofs and squat, rugged church tower of Tarn Regis; and pictures rose in
my mind, pictures to some extent inspired, perhaps, by scraps I had read
of learned essays written by my father. He had loved this ancient
ground; he had been used to finger the earth hereabouts as a man might
finger his mistress's hair. I do not know what period my twilit fancy
happened upon, but it was assuredly a later one than that of Barebarrow,
for I saw shaggy warriors with huge pointless swords, their hilts
decorated with the teeth of wild beasts--a Bronze Age vision, no doubt.
I saw rude chariots of war, with murderous scythe-blades on their
wheels--and, in a flash then, the figure of Boadicea: that valiant
mother of our race, erect and fearless in her chariot--

Regions Caesar never knew,
Thy posterity shall sway!

"Thy posterity shall sway!" If you repeat the lines to yourself you may
see the outline of my vision. There at the foot of Barebarrow I saw that
Queen of ancient Britons at the head of her wild, shaggy legions. "The
Roman Army can never withstand the shouts