d God knows where else!"

The Justice said: "I think that Varus had to try with all his might to
reach the Rhine, and that he could have done only by gaining the open
country. The battle is said to have lasted three days, and in that
length of time you can march a good distance. Hence I am rather of the
opinion that the attack in the mountains which surround our plain did
not take place very far from here."

"Wrong, wrong, Justice!" cried the Collector. "Here below everything was
occupied and blocked up by the Cherusci, Catti, and Sigambri. No the
battle was much farther south, near the region of the Ruhr, not far from
Arnsberg. Varus had to push his way through the mountains, he had no
egress anywhere, and his mind was bent on reaching the middle Rhine,
whither the road leads diagonally across Sauerland. That is what I have
always thought, and now I have discovered the most unmistakable evidence
of it. Close by the Ruhr I found the bronze and bought the three idols,
and a man from the village told me that hardly an hour's walk from there
was a place in the woods among the mountains where an enormous quantity
of bones were piled up in the sand and gravel. Ha! I exclaimed, the day
is beginning to break. I went out there with a few peasants, had them
excavate a little, and, behold! we came across bones to my heart's
content. So that is the place where Germanicus had the remnants of the
Roman legions buried six years after the battle of Teutoburg Wood, when
he directed his last expeditions against Hermann. And I have therefore
discovered the right battlefield."

"Bones do not ordinarily preserve themselves for a thousand years and
more," said the Justice, shaking his head doubtfully.

"They have become petrified among the minerals there," said the
collector angrily. "I'll have to put an evidence of my theory in your
hand--here is one I have brought with me." He drew forth a large bone
from his shirt and held it before his opponent's eyes. "Now, what do
you call that?" he asked triumphantly.

The peasants stared at the bone in amazement. The Justice, after he had
examined it, replied: "A cow's bone, Mr. Schmitz! You discovered a
carrion-pit, not the battlefield of Teutoburg."

The Collector indignantly put the discredited antiquity back into its
place and uttered a few violent imprecations, to which the old peasant
knew the most effective way to reply. It seemed as if a quarrel might
ensue between the two men, but as