are full of the bones of dead men, and a solemn Crowner's quest is held
on the remains of a Saxon or Dane or an ancient Briton. When some
important person--a Sir Richard Colt Hoare, for example, who dug up 379
barrows in Wiltshire, or a General Pitt Rivers throws out human remains
nobody minds, but if an unauthorized rabbit kicks out a lot of bones the
matter should be inquired into.

But the man whose bones had been thus thrown out into the sunlight after
lying so long at that spot, which commanded a view of the distant,
little village looking so small in that immense, green space--who and
what was he, and how long ago did he live on the earth--at Winterbourne
Bishop, let us say? There were two barrows in that part of the down, but
quite a stone's-throw away from the spot where the rabbit was working,
so that he may not have been one of the people of that period. Still, it
is probable that he was buried a very long time ago, centuries back,
perhaps a thousand years, perhaps longer, and by chance there was a
slope there which prevented the water from percolating, and the soil in
which he had been deposited, under that close-knit turf which looked as
if it had never been disturbed, was one in which bones might keep
uncrumbled for ever.

The thought that occurred to me at the time was that if the man himself
had come back to life after so long a period, to stand once more on that
down surveying the scene, he would have noticed little change in it,
certainly nothing of a startling description. The village itself,
looking so small at that distance, in the centre of the vast depression,
would probably not be strange to him. It was doubtless there as far back
as history goes and probably still farther back in time. For at that
point, just where the winterbourne gushes out from the low hills, is the
spot man would naturally select to make his home. And he would see no