and had thought it possible they marked the place where things of value
had been buried in long-past ages. To begin he cut the turf all round
and carefully removed it, then dug and found a thick layer of flints.
These removed, he came upon a deposit of ashes and charred wood. And
that was all. Burdon without a word set to work to put it all back in
its place again--ashes and wood, and earth and flints--and having trod
it firmly down he carefully replaced the turf, then leaning on his spade
gazed silently at the spot for a space of several minutes. At last he
spoke. "Maybe, Caleb, you've beared tell about what the Bible says of
burnt sacrifice. Well now, I be of opinion that it were here. They
people the Bible says about, they come up here to sacrifice on White
Bustard Down, and these be the places where they made their fires."

Then he shouldered his spade and started home, the boy following.
Caleb's comment was: "I didn't say nothing to un because I were only a
leetel boy and he were a old man; but I knowed better than that all the
time, because them people in the Bible they was never in England at all,
so how could they sacrifice on White Bustard Down in Wiltsheer?"

It was no idle boast on his part. Caleb and his brothers had been taught
their letters when small, and the Bible was their one book, which they
read not only in the evenings at home but out on the downs during the
day when they were with the flock. His extreme familiarity with the
whole Scripture narrative was a marvel to me; it was also strange,
considering how intelligent a man he was, that his lifelong reading of
that one book had made no change in his rude "Wiltsheer" speech.

Apart from the feeling which old, religious country people, who know
nothing about the Higher Criticism, have for the Bible, taken literally
as the Word of God, there is that in the old Scriptures which appeals in