LOCAL ANTIQUITIES.
IT all began with Obed Pearce taking it into his head to build himself a house up on the common. Nobody could imagine what possessed Obed to be " messin' about we
they girt stwoneaes" at the beginning of his sixtieth year, when it would have been more becoming to start preparations for mansions in the skies. But then Obed had always been " guar° " in his notice's, and what were you to expect from a man who habitually talked to himself ? Captious persons used to say that this reprehensible habit brought the rain down, and certainly it always seemed. to rain when Obed was about to load bay. But he never had any luck in anything. Obed had never married, presumably because be had not wanted to, and he shared a house with a married nephew who owned eight children. After sharing it for fifteen years, be might be supposed to have got used to the arrangement; but whether it was that Obed's ideas required time to mature, so that the heath-cottage theory was not ripe until he reached hie sixtieth year, or whether he had grown tired of the constant society of "slants clamorous whether pleased or pained," or whether he was one of those people who never seem convinced that they are right until some one tells them they are wrong, at all events he started building that house, and he made a further and still more shocking departure from local custom by omitting to lay a silver sixpence in with the foundation- stone. This omission naturally promised ill-luck from the outset; but it was no use arguing the point, for Obed talked to nobody but himself. He went on working away, hauling and digging like some laborious elderly mole, until the founda- tions of his house were laid; and then Obed died one day without giving anybody warning, and had no longer any need of houses made with hands.
They stood bare for a long time, those queer solid ground- works, and then time and the wind and the natural course of things began to absorb them very slowly into the character of the common. The heaps of dug-out soil became overgrown with short, close grass, and the furze seeded and grew up in little thorny tufts all over the cracks of the mortar; and when the tufts grew into bushes, and grass and bracken covered all but the topmost stones, the foundations of Obed's house looked as if they had never been anything but a natural development of the common's timeless age.
All this happened a very long while ago. The unaccountable whim of Seth Pearce's "big-uncle" Obed only lingers in the memories of the oldest generation. None of the children can tell you what the big round heap on the common is, and none of their fathers can remember seeing sails on the disused windmill that stands a gunshot away from it. Nobody but Obed ever would have dreamed of building anything but a mill up in that windy place. Every wind of heaven sweeps the golden loneliness of the common; on stormy days you would say they all blew together in a general frenzy. Since the windmill was reduced to the footing of a mere living-house the dwellers in it have planted a screen of gaunt thorn-trees on the seaward side, because the fiercest wind blows from that direction, and all the trees lean away from it, so that the place looks storm- blown even when the breeze is slight, though that happens seldom. There used to be a weather-duck before the door, who swung serene among the whirl of elements with the unmatch- able complacency of his feathered prototype, fitfully intelligent with the gleam of a sphinx-like eye when the wind swung him broadside on. He is gone now, and there is a fine new painted fence all round the house and yard that looks much too modern and prosperous to have any right at all on the common.
When Obed's whim was well out of mind some fifty years after his death, the manor house was sold and the land divided, and a new squire came to live there. The squire's wife said that that mound looked very like a barrow, and the squire said he would get Professor Jones to look at it the next time he came on a week-end visit. It is a melancholy truism that the issues of great questions are often determined by trifles. W— lies far from a town, and it is difficult to get a constant supply of fish ; and Professor Jones's moral organisa- tion was seriously impaired because his salad had been made with tinned lobster. Sd when he got up to the top of the common, and his hat had been blown off once into a furze- bush and once into the pond, the Professor looked at the " barrow " and uttered a sound between a snort and a growl. "Windmills, of course," said he. "What else did you expect to get up here P" and he got the early train the next morning without reconsidering his verdict. But it takes more than that to daunt the irresponsible amateur of archaeology, and since the whole range of the Mendips is a treasure-house of antiquities, local enthusiasm felt it would go hard if W—
was to share in none of the glories. So not very long after this, through the influence of two or three ardent spirits, a local branch of research was formed at a neighbouring centre, and ail the surrounding parishes were ransacked by enthusiasts with Ordnance maps and unbridled imagination* The dates of church towers or belfry inscriptions are tolerably safe material even for the most impassioned, but etymologies and Roman remains present fewer limits to restrain soaring flights of fancy. Such, in consequence, were very popular for a time among local Camden* until the Roman occupation theory received a rude cheek when a discovery was made near the village street half -a-milebelow Obed Pearce's "barrow." It was here that an active and leading member of the club was pursuing investigations with regard to a large flat stone of suspicious appearance that stood up all by itself in the middle of Ben Weaver's field without any plausible excuse to offer for being there. Stepping backwards to get a better focus of the suspected stone, the active member's left leg went abruptly right through a harmless-looking patch of bramble close by, and the member barely avoided turning a back somersault bodily into the middle of the patch. By exerting remarkable agility, lie escaped with a scratched gaiter and a stimulated imagination. Poking through the brambles, he found that
they half concealed a pit, a pit of moderate depth, round, and showing traces of cement,—a very suspicious pit, that was clearly not a shaft, and was as clearly in mysterious collusion with the big stone. The Mendip country is riddled with shafts sunk by the Romans for lead, worked later by Somerset men, and often carelessly covered over. Sometimes a lawn will sink because it has been laid over the rudely covered mouth of such a shaft, deep enough to swallow a house. But this pit was no shaft. The active member called the club's attention to it, and the next meeting was settled and the brambles cleared with amazing celerity. The pit looked most pro- mising, and the eye of faith could very nearly discern order in the configuration of the surrounding meadow. The assembled party debated long and eagerly; there was much discussion, heated arguments, and a few sceptics who said it was a duck-pond; but there are always people in these societies who have no historic flair. One current of opinion set strongly towards the Roman occupation of W—; but then, granting that the Romans dug that pit, nobody could agree what they dug it for. Other theories were in favour of the Danes, others still of the Saxons ; invading races were bandied about like shuttlecocks; some desperate fanatics began per- smiting neighbours with etymologies, and conventions were
becoming strained in some quarters It was at this point that the oldest inhabitant looked out of his window.
This window was a small pane at the back of the fireplace which had the advantage of presenting a view down the length of the steep street, whereas the legitimate windows only looked across the way. Observing through the smoke- dimmed pane a crowd collected in "Girt-Mead," the oldest in- habitant pondered over it for a while. Crowds are an unusual spectacle in W—, " There'm nobody don't want to be put 1 the dirt as I've heerd on, so it cann't be a buryin'," said he at length; and then he reached for his stick and hobbled out to see. He had very large boots and a very solemn face, with patches of white hair scattered over it. He looked as if he had forgotten most things, and certainly had forgotten how to laugh. He went slowly, partly because he was very old, and partly because you do not hurry when you have reached arn age at which life holds no more surprises. When he got up to the archaeologists they had left off all talking at once, and the gentleman who had tumbled into discovering the pit was reiterating his theory that it had something to do with the big atone, and both belonged to the Roman occupation of the country. The words were long and the accent msprovincial, and the oldest inhabitant soon lost the thread. Presently his eye turned towards the subject of inquiry lying open to the light of day clear from its accustomed brambles. He hobbled towards it, and his ancient countenance lit up with a momentary gleam of reminiscence. " A.w," said be, addressing nobody in particular, "I mind, I do, when they did dig thiccy pit to fight cocks in " I
Local research occupied itself for several meetings after that with domestic architecture of the fourteenth century, of which Somerset affords some remarkably fine examples, and has the additional advantage of possessing nobody old enough to "mind the biggie et."
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