t was full of little thickets and
thorn-bushes then. He was not very willing to tell me, I thought, but
by dint of questions I discovered that it was a common, and that it was
known locally by the curious name of Heaven's Walls. He went on to say
that it was considered unlucky to set foot in it; and that, as a matter
of fact, no villager would ever dream of going there; he would not say
why, but at last it came out that it was supposed to be haunted by a
spirit. No one, it seemed, had ever seen anything there, but it was an
unlucky place.

"Well, I thought no more of it at the time, though I often went into
the field. It was a quiet and pretty place enough; full of thickets, as
I have said, where the birds built unmolested--there was generally a
goldfinch's nest there.

"It became necessary to lay a drain across it, and a big trench was
dug. One day they came and told me that the workmen had found
something--would I go and look at it? I went out and found that they
had unearthed a large Roman cinerary urn, containing some calcined
bones. I told the lord of the manor, who is a squire in the next
parish, and he and I after that kept a look-out over the workmen. We
found another urn, and another, both full of bones. Then we found a big
glass vessel, also containing bones. The squire got interested in the
thing, and eventually had the whole place dug out. We found a large
enclosure, once surrounded by a stone wall, of which you see the
remains; in two of the corners there was an enormous deposit of wood
ashes, in deep pits, which looked as if great fires had burnt there;
and the walls in those two corners were all calcined and smoke-stained.
We found fifty or sixty urns, all full of bones; and in another corner
there was a deep shaft, like a well, dug in the chalk, with handholds
down the sides, also full of calcined bones. We found a few coins, and
in one place a conglomeration of rust that looked as if it might have
been a heap of tools or weapons. We set the antiquaries to work, and
they pronounced it to be what is called a Roman Ustrinum--that is to
say, a public crematorium, where people who could not afford a separate
funeral might bring a corpse to be burnt. If they had no place to
deposit the urn, in which the bones were enclosed, they were allowed,
it seems, to bury the urn there, until such time as they cared to
remove it. There was a big Roman settlement here, you know. There was a
fort on the hill there, and t