I ask, What if it is Roman?

A great deal, according to him.  That it proves all the world to be wrong in this great argument, and himself alone to be right!  Can I wait while he digs further?

I agree—­reluctantly; but he does not notice my reluctance.  At an adjoining spot he begins flourishing the tools anew with the skill of a navvy, this venerable scholar with letters after his name.  Sometimes he falls on his knees, burrowing with his hands in the manner of a hare, and where his old-fashioned broadcloth touches the sides of the hole it gets plastered with the damp earth.  He continually murmurs to himself how important, how very important, this discovery is!  He draws out an object; we wash it in the same primitive way by rubbing it with the wet grass, and it proves to be a semi-transparent bottle of iridescent beauty, the sight of which draws groans of luxurious sensibility from the digger.  Further and further search brings out a piece of a weapon.  It is strange indeed that by merely peeling off a wrapper of modern accumulations we have lowered ourselves into an ancient world.  Finally a skeleton is uncovered, fairly perfect.  He lays it out on the grass, bone to its bone.

My friend says the man must have fallen fighting here, as this is no place of burial.  He turns again to the trench, scrapes, feels, till from a corner he draws out a heavy lump—­a small image four or five inches high.  We clean it as before.  It is a statuette, apparently of gold, or, more probably, of bronze-gilt—­a figure of Mercury, obviously, its head being surmounted with the petasus or winged hat, the usual accessory of that deity.  Further inspection reveals the workmanship to be of good finish and detail, and, preserved by the limy earth, to be as fresh in every line as on the day it left the hands of its artificer.

We seem to be standing in the Roman Forum and not on a hill in Wessex.  Intent upon this truly valuable relic of the old empire of which even this remote spot was a component part, we do not notice what is going on in the present world till reminded of it by the sudden renewal of the storm.  Looking up I perceive that the wide extinguisher of cloud has again settled down upon the fortress-town, as if resting upon the edge of the inner rampart, and shutting out the moon.  I turn my back to the tempest, still directing the light across the hole.  My companion digs on unconcernedly; he is living two thousand years ago, and despises things of the moment as dreams.  But at last he is fairly beaten, and standing up beside me looks round on what he has done.  The rays of the lantern pass over the trench to the tall skeleton stretched upon the grass on the other side.  The beating rain has washed the bones clean and smooth, and the forehead, cheek-bones, and two-and-thirty teeth of the skull glisten in the candle-shine as they lie.