blaze of a fire of well dried stumps of the old
disused poles of a neighbouring hop garden.

The letter carrier of the district, taking
an hour's rest before he started on his weary
homeward route of seven miles, to the post
town on the coast, was a nice fellow. And it
was nice, likewise, to feel that it was not I who
had to trudge out collecting from bye stations
and little hamlets a few letters, sometimes a
single one, to add to the Niagara of
correspondence that would be poured during the
night into the vast—shall I say, basin—of St.
Martin-le-Grand.

Here was also the village blacksmith, an
exceedingly good fellow. His thin, well-marked
features could twist into a benevolent sort of
smile, when any remark gave him peculiar
satisfaction; and everything pleased him
peculiarly. He loved a joke, although he had given
up laughing, and transferred his entire stock of
laughter to the twinkle of his eye. Particularly
his eye twinkled at a joke at the expense of
the landlord, for whom he had a cheery and
convivial hatred.

Two or three other guests were present, I
remember: mere country fellows, but good
fellows, taking their pints of beer or ale,
before they resumed their walks—I was not
going to resume my walk that night—to their
somewhat distant homes. Our village—I
suppose it was a village, for it had a parish
church—consisted of a couple of farm houses,
and half a dozen cottages on very distant terms
with one another. Street there was none,
and the only shop I ever saw in those parts was
the home of the carrier, who went twice a week
to a remote town, with an old horse and an
older van, and whose wife diverted her attention
from his absence by selling lucifer matches,
balls of string, dips, bulls' eyes, and farthing
rushlights. She also washed the clergyman's
surplice, and kept the keys of the parish church,
which was occasionally visited by gentlemen
concerned in old graves—gentlemen, in short,
of my profession—to inspect a very ancient
brass of Sir Peter de Craon, unhelmed, in chain
mail, standing on a lion couchant.

"What luck to-day, sir?" asked my landlord,
as I joined the delightful circle of his
customers, around the crackle of the hop sticks.
"I see you have brought home some things.
Suppose you have made up your mind there
is no harm in digging up those poor chaps'
bones?"

"Not much," I said. "I always bury them
again."

"That's very good of you, sir. Yes, sir,
Parson couldn't do more. But what have you
here?" he said, taking up a black earthen urn,
which I had just placed on the table before me,
that my eyes might sup on it.

"An olla," I said.

"A holler! What? With a whoop?" And
they all enjoyed his little joke.

"No," I said, "it is not hooped. This is a
vessel placed in the grave of the deceased
person; but for what especial use, or to what
signification dedicated, it might be difficult to
determine. Which is what makes it most
interesting. Nobody can tell its use."

"Would you tell me," said a tall man in
rusty black, the scholar of the village, "would
you tell me how you discover graves; and
what great battle it was in which these persons
were killed?"

"As for the battle, it was the battle of life in
which we shall all have our own time for being
knocked over. Here was the regular cemetery
or burial place of the forefathers of this hamlet,
perhaps in heathen times, probably about the
sixth or seventh century of our era."

"Not an ordinary battle, sir? And yet you
have found swords, spear-heads, and knives?"

"Yes," I said, "and the beads, earrings, and
brooches of women, their household keys, and
the toys and trinkets of their children. In fact,
men, women, and children, went to their last
beds in the cemetery up on the hillside yonder,
much as they do now in the churchyard at its
feet. Not in coffins, perhaps, but as carefully
and I dare say as reverently buried, as they are
to-day."

"Ay, ay, Reverently buried," said the landlord,
laying all the stress he could upon the
word by his manner of cramming fresh tobacco
into his pipe—"Reverently buried. And it
may be, quite as reverently dug up again."

I took no notice of this side thrust, but
turned to my friend in rusty black, who was
no less a personage than the master of the
parochial school. "You ask how we find these
graves? If there be no tumuli, nor 'barrows,'
as they are called, we owe our first hint of
them to accident. The Anglo-Saxon cemetery
at Sarr, where nearly three hundred graves
were opened, was first discovered when the
owner of a windmill resolved to set up a
steam-engine. While digging for the erection
of it, they found an old grave full of rich
remains, the gold coins of Frankish kings, an
amber necklace; brooches set with ivory, blood
stones, and garnets; and at the feet of the
skeleton a brazen stoup or caldron. In the
same manner, the cutting out of a roadway in
your parish revealed the first signs of this
cemetery, probably of a kindred tribe of ancient
settlers."

"Then you trench the field until you come
upon a grave?" said the schoolmaster."

"Not so," said I. "The proceeding is much
simpler. Luckily, as at Sarr, the undersoil is
of chalk, and in the ground where I have been
working, the depth of the upper soil varies only
from nine to eighteen inches. We have but to
take a spear and probe the ground. The point
strikes bottom soon, if there be no hole in
the chalk. But where there has been a grave
dug, down the spear goes into it. To be quite
sure of a find, I try all around, and when I
have shaped out a grave begin my digging."

"And what then?"

"Then, when we get within a foot or nine
inches of the floor of the grave, or less,
according to conditions that are found by