“But I don’t see much ‘mound’ about them,” objected Hal.
However, a series of gentle little rises could be made out, each with its blunt top laid open, and its sides disfigured by heaps of dirt.
“What do they find in them?” asked Hal.
“Oh, skeletons, and arrow-heads, and things,” informed Ned. “But you have to dig good and deep; twenty feet, I guess.”
The boys scanned with a thrill of awe these relics of a passed people who loved thus to inter their chiefs on some lofty outlook, commanding wood and stream.
“It must have been mighty long ago,” mused Hal. “Here’s a stump of a tree that grew right out of the middle of one.”
He fell to work counting the rings.
“Two hundred and sixty!” he announced.
“Gee!” blurted Ned. “Come on,” he proposed, after a moment which both required in order fully to grasp the message of the stump. “Let’s poke around inside of one, and perhaps we’ll find some arrow-heads and stuff.”
He picked up a stout piece of branch, with a sharp end, and slid down into the first pit; Hal, similarly equipped, slid after.