“This is very like trying to remember some game one played when one was a child.  It is like coming on something that one built up with bricks and stones in some forgotten part of the garden....”

“The life we lived here,” said the doctor, “has left its traces in traditions, in mental predispositions, in still unanalyzed fundamental ideas.”

“Archaeology is very like remembering,” said Sir Richmond.  “Presently we shall remember a lot more about all this.  We shall remember what it was like to live in this place, and the long journey hither, age by age out of the south.  We shall remember the sacrifices we made and the crazy reasons why we made them.  We sowed our corn in blood here.  We had strange fancies about the stars.  Those we brought with us out of the south where the stars are brighter.  And what like were those wooden gods of ours?  I don’t remember....  But I could easily persuade myself that I had been here before.”

They stood on the crest of the ancient wall and the setting sun cast long shadows of them athwart a field of springing wheat.

“Perhaps we shall come here again,” the doctor carried on Sir Richmond’s fancy; “after another four thousand years or so, with different names and fuller minds.  And then I suppose that this ditch won’t be the riddle it is now.”

“Life didn’t seem so complicated then,” Sir Richmond mused.  “Our muddles were unconscious.  We drifted from mood to mood and forgot.  There was more sunshine then, more laughter perhaps, and blacker despair.  Despair like the despair of children that can weep itself to sleep....  It’s over....  Was it battle and massacre that ended that long afternoon here?  Or did the woods catch fire some exceptionally dry summer, leaving black hills and famine?  Or did strange men bring a sickness—­measles, perhaps, or the black death?  Or was it cattle pest?  Or did we just waste our woods and dwindle away before the new peoples that came into the land across the southern sea?  I can’t remember....”

Sir Richmond turned about.  “I would like to dig up the bottom of this ditch here foot by foot—­and dry the stuff and sift it—­very carefully....  Then I might begin to remember things.”

Section 5

In the evening, after a pleasant supper, they took a turn about the walls with the moon sinking over beyond Silbury, and then went in and sat by lamplight before a brightly fussy wood fire and smoked.  There were long intervals of friendly silence.

“I don’t in the least want to go on talking about myself,” said Sir Richmond abruptly.

“Let it rest then,” said the doctor generously.

“To-day, among these ancient memories, has taken me out of myself wonderfully.  I can’t tell you how good Avebury has been for me.  This afternoon half my consciousness has seemed to be a tattooed creature wearing a knife of stone....”

“The healing touch of history.”

“And for the first time my damned Committee has mattered scarcely a rap.”