The relic bore abundant marks of the chert knife, a shard of which was cemented down to it; but, what raised its interest and value to the _n_th power, and made its discoverer's heart to flutter in his bosom, was the clear, boldly-drawn lines of the picture with which the flat surface of the bone was etched. Here was a find indeed, a leaf from the sketch-book of a Primitive, as good as anything found by Lartet and Christy. "_De_lightful! a find at last!" exclaimed the professor. "A contemporary picture of _Spelæus_, positively our first, I think. A bear attacking two humans, of opposite sexes, eh, what? but that seems unlikely. And what is this bent object in the hand of the indeterminate figure?--Weapon?--But what?" screwing up his eyes. "Bent throwing-stick, Egyptian type? Boomerang?--very curious. Same object repeated in corner of picture behind bear; conceivably boomerang in flight. But as to this--er--epicene figure--I doubt its being female somehow!--and yet--" He turned the bone, "Hey, what have we here?--this I might almost say justifies a feminine interpretation, there apparently was a woman in the case," for adhering to the back of the scapula was a bone needle! "Rough work this, for a female," remarked the professor, wagging his head whilst polishing his glasses, and attempting to realise the scene. "This fellow was as big as a horse, a grizzly would be considerably smaller and with inferior jaw power. The Magdalanian type was tall, I grant you,--she might have stood six feet and an inch, but--" he wagged his head again in disapproval of a woman participating in so rough a field sport as this sketch indicated. The professor was an old bachelor with mid-Victorian conceptions of the functions of womanhood.
"There is no getting over the charcoal--it was a cooking-place, a hearth. The design, here, implies leisure and permanent residence, and the needle a lady. This was a home, a housekeeping." He wrapped the relic in a silk handkerchief; it was more precious in his eyes than the arm of St Mark in those of a Venetian, and at least as authentic. This done he turned to take stock of the place, conversing gently with himself the while. "Cave more roomy at one time--hardly to call a cave now, possibly was never better than _un abri_, just the rock shelter that I once spent an uncomfortable night under among the Spanish Pyrenees." He glanced up at the overhang, fringed with fern. "Calls for systematic exploration.... Costly business at this height, short season and no quarters within any reasonable distance. Entails a camp, I fear. Wonder if the University would come down with a grant?... _Who were these people?_" he stroked the handkerchief. "We get no nearer; a hundred thousand years is a wide gap--very. It makes the pre-dynastic Egyptian seem neighbourly. We dig, we fit together, but--they are too remote. Personally, I despair of getting to closer quarters with them in my time." He mused with half-shut, speculative eyes. "The Myers and Gurney business gives unsatisfactory results at its best, and what communications they claim to have received seem chiefly from the recently deceased.... Classic idea of a _genius loci_ might have had something behind it ... but, _they_ approached the Surmise with propitiatory sacrifices,--we try the planchette--and get piffle! Other plan seems sounder, but, how to set about it? Language question a difficulty. Something might be attempted with an Esperanto of Eskimo and Bushman roots, eh?" he smiled. "And the offering? Coarsish tastes, I conceive...." In common with some three hundred millions of his fellow Europeans, the professor had never seen a sacrifice offered. The conception, once universal, has completely passed out of our ken. That a trousered, cravatted white man should take anything which he really valued--a horse, a motor, a family heirloom, a prize pedigree ram, a cask of claret--what you will, and deliberately destroy it in public for some definite religious object, or to purchase some visible result, recompense or immunity, is unthinkable.