“I say,” said he, returning to the spot, and wrenching the tool from Oliver’s hand; “I say—don’t you meddle any more. The curiosity is mine, you know. I found it, and it’s mine.”
“What will you do with it?” asked Oliver, who saw that, even now, Roger rather shrank from touching the limbs, and turned away from the open eyes of the body.
“It will make a show. If I don’t happen to see the earl, so as to get gold for it, I’ll make people give me a penny a piece to see it; and that will be as good as gold presently.”
“I wish you would bury it,” earnestly exclaimed Oliver, as the thought occurred to him that the time might come, though perhaps hundreds of years hence, when dear little George’s body might be found in like manner. He could not endure the idea of that body being ever made a show of.
Of course, Roger would not hear of giving up his treasure; and Oliver was walking away, when Roger called after him—
“Don’t go yet, Oliver. Wait a minute, and I will come with you.”
Oliver proceeded, however, thinking that Roger would have to acquire some courage yet before he could carry about his mummy for a show.
Oliver was only going for Mildred—to let her see, before it was quite dark, what had been done, and what found. When they returned, Roger was standing at some distance from the bank, apparently watching his mummy as it lay in the cleft that he had cleared. He started when he heard Mildred’s gentle voice exclaiming at its being so small and so dark-coloured. She next wondered how old it was.
After the boys had examined the ground again, and put together all they had heard about the ancient condition of the Levels, they agreed that this person must have been buried, or have died alone in the woods, before the district became a marsh. Pastor Dendel had told Oliver about the thick forest that covered these lands when the Romans invaded Britain; and how the inhabitants fled to the woods, and so hid themselves there that the Roman soldiers had to cut down the woods to get at them; and how the trees, falling across the courses of the streams, dammed them up, so that the surrounding soil was turned into a swamp; and how mosses and water-plants grew over the fallen trees, and became matted together, so that more vegetation grew on the top of that, till the ancient forest was, at length, quite buried in the carr. Oliver now reminded his sister of all this: and they looked with a kind of veneration on the form which they supposed was probably that of an ancient Briton, who, flying from the invaders, into the recesses of the forest, had perished there alone. There was no appearance of his having been buried. No earthen vessels, or other remains, such as were usually found in the graves of the ancients, appeared to be contained in the bank. If he had died lying along the ground, his body would have decayed like other bodies, or been devoured by wild beasts. Perhaps he was drowned in one of the ponds or streams of the forest, and the body, being immediately washed over with sand or mud, was thus preserved.
“What is the use of guessing and guessing?” exclaimed Roger. “If people should dig up George’s bones, out of this bank, a thousand years hence, and find them lying in a sort of oven, as they would call it, with a fine carved stone for one of the six sides, do you think they could ever guess how all these things came to be here?”