dily up and
down. "I heven't forgot, I heven't forgot."

"Are you all right again, Bargle?" said Dick, trying in vain to
extricate his hand.

"Yeees. Knock o' the yead don't hot me. See here."

He slowly drew out of his pocket a great piece of dark-yellow ivory,
evidently the point, and about a foot in length, of the tusk of some
animal, probably an elephant.

"Theer's what I promised you, lad. That's a tush, that is. What yer
think o' that?"

Dick did not seem to know what to think of it, but he expressed his
gratitude as well as he could, and had to shake hands again and again
with the great fellow, who seemed to take intense delight in smiling at
Dick and shaking his head at him.

How long this scene would have lasted it is impossible to say; but at
last, as it was growing irksome, there came a shout from the end of the
drain.

"They've found something else," said Mr Marston; and the lads needed no
telling to hasten their steps, for the finding of _something_ buried in
the peat could not fail to prove interesting; but in this case the
discovery was startling to the strongest nerves.

As they neared the end of the drain where the men were slowly delving
out the peat, and a section of the bog was before them showing about
twelve feet of, the wet black soil, Mr Marston stepped eagerly forward,
and the group of men who were standing together opened out to let him
and his companions pass through.

Dick shuddered at the object before him: the figure of a man clothed
apparently in some kind of leather garb, and partly uncovered from the
position it had occupied in the peat.

"Some un been murdered and berrid," growled Bargle, who was close
behind.

"No, my man," said Mr Marston, taking a spade and cutting down some
more of the turf, so as to lay bare the figure from the middle of the
thigh to the feet.

"Lemme come," growled Bargle, striding forward and almost snatching the
sharp spade from his leader's hand.

"Don't hurt it," cried Mr Marston, giving way.

"Nay, no fear o' hotting him," growled Bargle, grinning, and, bending to
his work, he deftly cut away the black peat till the figure stood before
them upright in the bog as if fitted exactly in the face of the section
like some brownish-black fossil of a human being.

It was the figure of a man in a leather garb, and wearing a kind of
gaiters bound to the legs by strips of hide which went across and across
from the instep to far above the knee.