“Some un been murdered and berrid,” growled Bargle, who was close behind.
“No, my man,” said Mr Marston, taking a spade and cutting down some more of the turf, so as to lay bare the figure from the middle of the thigh to the feet.
“Lemme come,” growled Bargle, striding forward and almost snatching the sharp spade from his leader’s hand.
“Don’t hurt it,” cried Mr Marston, giving way.
“Nay, no fear o’ hotting him,” growled Bargle, grinning, and, bending to his work, he deftly cut away the black peat till the figure stood before them upright in the bog as if fitted exactly in the face of the section like some brownish-black fossil of a human being.
It was the figure of a man in a leather garb, and wearing a kind of gaiters bound to the legs by strips of hide which went across and across from the instep to far above the knee. There was a leathern girdle about the waist, and one hand was slightly raised, as if it had held a staff or spear, but no remains of these were to be seen. Probably the head had once been covered, but it was bare now, and a quantity of long shaggy hair still clung to the dark-brown skin, the face being half covered by a beard; and, in spite of the brown-black leathery aspect of the face, and the contracted skin, it did not seem half so horrible as might have been supposed.
“Why, boys,” said Mr Marston after a long examination, “this might be the body of someone who lived as long back as the date when that old galley was in use.”
“So long back as that!” cried Dick, looking curiously at the strange figure, whose head was fully six feet below the surface of the bog.
“Got a-walking across in the dark, and sinked in,” said Bargle gruffly.
That might or might not have been the case. At any rate there was the body of a man in a wonderful state of preservation, kept from decay by the action of the peat; and, judging from the clothing, the body must have been in its position there for many hundred years.