the enemy laughs, and for thee the Posse might have had us both like
daylight owls.'

With that he took me on his back and made off with a lusty stride,
keeping as much as possible under the brow of the hill and in the shelter
of the walls. We had slept longer than we thought, for the sun was
westering fast, and though the rest had refreshed me, my leg had grown
stiff, and hurt the more in dangling when we started again. Elzevir was
still walking strongly, in spite of the heavy burden he carried, and in
less than half an hour I knew, though I had never been there before, we
were in the land of the old marble quarries at the back of Anvil Point.

Although I knew little of these quarries, and certainly was in evil
plight to take note of anything at that time, yet afterwards I learnt
much about them. Out of such excavations comes that black Purbeck Marble
which you see in old churches in our country, and I am told in other
parts of England as well. And the way of making a marble quarry is to
sink a tunnel, slanting very steeply down into the earth, like a well
turned askew, till you reach fifty, seventy, or perhaps one hundred feet
deep. Then from the bottom of this shaft there spread out narrow passages
or tunnels, mostly six feet high, but sometimes only three or four, and
in these the marble is dug. These quarries were made by men centuries
ago, some say by the Romans themselves; and though some are still worked
in other parts of Purbeck, those at the back of Anvil Point have been
disused beyond the memory of man.

We had left the stony village fields, and the face of the country was
covered once more with the closest sward, which was just putting on the
brighter green of spring. This turf was not smooth, but hummocky, for
under it lay heaps of worthless stone and marble drawn out of the
quarries ages ago, which the green vestment had covered for the most
part, though it left sometimes a little patch of broken rubble peering
out at the top of a mound. There were many tumble-down walls and low
gables left of the cottages of the old quarrymen; grass-covered ridges
marked out the little garden-folds, and here and there still stood a
forlorn gooseberry-bush, or a stunted plum-or apple-tree with its
branches all swept eastward by the up-Channel gales. As for the quarry
shafts themselves, they too were covered round the tips with the green
turf, and down them led a narrow flight of steep-cut steps, with a slide
of soap-st