"A lot of weathering just here," he muttered. "Glen half filled-up since the watershed was cut back and the stream diverted. This was a cliff once upon a time, and this was a cave. Roof fallen in and cemented down to an ancient stalagmite floor ... breccia beneath with, apparently, a layer of charcoal in it.... If you please!" this to the lilies; they did please, or at least made way for him; he was down upon his elderly knees in the moist dirt breaking away the perished flooring of the old cave with his hammer; interested, of course, for the case was exactly in his line, but still without enthusiasm, when (see how our best things approach us unsought) the man made his great find, the chance of his lifetime came to him, such a trove as he had ceased to expect, for, despite many long vacations and snatched Easters spent in patient and systematic grubbing, the man had not been one of the successful cave explorers. But this was his day; a plate of stalagmite came away, and the disintegrated breccia beneath it gave to his cautious and practised handling, and lo, he drew forth the whole and perfect shoulder-blade of a Cave Bear, the mighty Ursus spelæus himself, glazed all over back and front with a transparent film of carbonate of lime.
The relic bore abundant marks of the chert knife, a shard of which was cemented down to it; but, what raised its interest and value to the nth power, and made its discoverer's heart to flutter in his bosom, was the clear, boldly-drawn lines of the picture with which the flat surface of the bone was etched. Here was a find indeed, a leaf from the sketch-book of a Primitive, as good as anything found by Lartet and Christy. "Delightful! a find at last!" exclaimed the professor. "A contemporary picture of Spelæus, positively our first, I think. A bear attacking two humans, of opposite sexes, eh, what? but that seems unlikely. And what is this bent object in the hand of the indeterminate figure?—Weapon?—But what?" screwing up his eyes. "Bent throwing-stick, Egyptian type? Boomerang?—very curious. Same object repeated in corner of picture behind bear; conceivably boomerang in flight. But as to this—er—epicene figure—I doubt its being female somehow!—and yet—" He turned the bone, "Hey, what have we here?—this I might almost say justifies a feminine interpretation, there apparently was a woman in the case," for adhering to the back of the scapula was a bone needle! "Rough work this, for a female," remarked the professor, wagging his head whilst polishing his glasses, and attempting to realise the scene. "This fellow was as big as a horse, a grizzly would be considerably smaller and with inferior jaw power. The Magdalanian type was tall, I grant you,—she might have stood six feet and an inch, but—" he wagged his head again in disapproval of a woman participating in so rough a field sport as this sketch indicated. The professor was an old bachelor with mid-Victorian conceptions of the functions of womanhood.
"There is no getting over the charcoal—it was a cooking-place, a hearth. The design, here, implies leisure and permanent residence, and the needle a lady. This was a home, a housekeeping." He wrapped the relic in a silk handkerchief; it was more precious in his eyes than the arm of St Mark in those of a Venetian, and at least as authentic. This done he turned to take stock of the place, conversing gently with himself the while. "Cave more roomy at one time—hardly to call a cave now, possibly was never better than un abri, just the rock shelter that I once spent an uncomfortable night under among the Spanish Pyrenees." He glanced up at the overhang, fringed with fern. "Calls for systematic exploration.... Costly business at this height, short season and no quarters within any reasonable distance. Entails a camp, I fear. Wonder if the University would come down with a grant?... Who were these people?" he stroked the handkerchief. "We get no nearer; a hundred thousand years is a wide gap—very. It makes the pre-dynastic Egyptian seem neighbourly. We dig, we fit together, but—they are too remote. Personally, I despair of getting to closer quarters with them in my time." He mused with half-shut, speculative eyes. "The Myers and Gurney business gives unsatisfactory results at its best, and what communications they claim to have received seem chiefly from the recently deceased.... Classic idea of a genius loci might have had something behind it ... but, they approached the Surmise with propitiatory sacrifices,—we try the planchette—and get piffle! Other plan seems sounder, but, how to set about it? Language question a difficulty. Something might be attempted with an Esperanto of Eskimo and Bushman roots, eh?" he smiled. "And the offering? Coarsish tastes, I conceive...." In common with some three hundred millions of his fellow Europeans, the professor had never seen a sacrifice offered. The conception, once universal, has completely passed out of our ken. That a trousered, cravatted white man should take anything which he really valued—a horse, a motor, a family heirloom, a prize pedigree ram, a cask of claret—what you will, and deliberately destroy it in public for some definite religious object, or to purchase some visible result, recompense or immunity, is unthinkable.
The professor's mind fell back from this impermeable wall of alien thought and custom. He sighed and shifted himself as if about to rise, still muttering. "I'd give a good deal," said he, without the faintest idea that he was really and veritably offering Something to Someone, but, sincere as far as he went, "for one hour's genuine confab, séance, communication (call it what you like) with this couple, here. What wouldn't I give?—ah—say a clear month out of my life—"
He said no more for that time, in fact he stopped short in the middle of his sentence and fell forward doubled up into a soft mass of the greenstuff which he had treated with so little ceremony, nor did he fall alone; a sheet of stalactite, part of the ancient roof of the cave, had detached itself from the impending lip and fallen upon and with him.
Was it possible that the genius loci had taken him at his word?