Britons taking refuge in the Cave.

And so once more the caves became the abode of man, for the harassed Britons brought what few things they could carry away from their houses and hid themselves there from their enemies. How little they thought, as they lay down to sleep on the cavern floor, that beneath them lay the remains of two ages of men! They knew nothing of the woman who had dropped her stone spindle-whorl into the fire, on which the food of Neolithic man had been cooking in rough pots of clay; they never dug down to the layer of gnawed bones, nor did they even in their dreams picture the hyæna haunting his ancient den, for a hyæna was an animal they had never seen. Still less would they have believed that at one time, countless ages before, their island had been part of the continent, and that men, living in the cave where they now lay, had cut down trees with rough flints, and fought with such unknown animals as the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger.

But the magician saw it all passing before him, even as he also saw these Britons carrying into the cave their brooches, bracelets, and finger rings, their iron spears and bronze daggers, and all their little household treasures which they had saved in their flight. And among these, mingling in the heap, he recognised Roman coins bearing the inscription of the Emperor Constantine, and he knew that it was by these coins that he had, a few days before in Yorkshire, been able to fix the date of the British occupation of a cave.

And with this his dream ended, and he found himself clutching firmly the horn on which Palæolithic man had engraved the figure of the reindeer. He rose, and stretching himself crossed the sunny grass plot of the quadrangle and entered his classroom. The boys wondered as he began his lecture at the far-away look in his eyes. They did not know how he had passed through a vision of countless ages; but that afternoon, for the first time, they realised, as he unfolded scene after scene, the history of "The Men of Ancient Days."

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