Days Before history

by H. R. Hall

I AM afraid,” said Uncle John, when the chapter was finished, “that we shall not be able to have any more reading these holidays; for to-morrow and the next day I shall be away from home. There is one day left after that, as you know, but instead of the story I have planned an outing for us, which I have been trying to arrange ever since we read about the burial of the Old Chief. My plan is this. Up on the moor, beyond the place where we found the pit-dwellings, there is a barrow, as it is called, the burial mound of one of the old chiefs of the time that we have been reading about. The owner of the land, who is a friend of mine, intends to open the barrow; the work is to be begun to-morrow, and he has invited us to go and see what there is to be seen.”

So on the next day they all set off to the moor with a big hamper of provisions and a tea-kettle and a spade each. There were several mounds and barrows on the high parts of the moor, and in one place there were three huge standing stones marking what had once been a whole circle of stones.

They walked over the moor until they found the squire and his men. The men were already at work with picks and shovels, and had made a deep cutting in the side of the barrow. At first they had dug through a quantity of the heathery soil and gravel, but after a while they came to large stones; and digging these out and carrying them back out of the way was very hard work.

Uncle John rolled one aside and said to the boys:

“Can any of you find me another stone like this one anywhere on the moor round about?”

They looked at the stone, which was a smooth rounded boulder, and then searched the ground round about. But the only stones that were there were small and rough. “This one came from the bed of the stream down below there,” said Uncle John, “don’t you see it is water-worn. The men who built this barrow carried that stone and these others like it all the way up here on their shoulders.”

After they had had lunch, the work was begun again, the men pulling out the big stones one after another. At last they came to where several large flat stones were set on edge, leaning one against another. These were pulled away, and then there was discovered a little chamber right in the centre of the barrow, walled in with flat stones; and in the midst of this little chamber a large urn of baked earthenware. Before anything was moved, Uncle John brought the boys to look, and showed them how the floor of the little chamber had been strewn with fine white sand upon which the urn was set. Beside it were three smaller vessels all empty, and lying beside them were two flint arrow-heads, a small stone axe, and a hammer made out of the thick end of a red deer’s antler bored with a hole to fit a handle into. Uncle John lifted the urn carefully out and they all looked inside it. It was full of dust and ashes, and some bits of charred bone, and some chips and splinters of flint that had also been burned. These relics were all gathered carefully together to be taken to the squire’s house, and the workmen began to put away their tools.

As Uncle John and the boys walked home, Dick asked: “Did those people burn every one who died?”