As Uncle John and the boys walked home, Dick asked: “Did those people burn every one who died?”
“Perhaps not every one, but they did it very often.”
“That is a hard question for me to answer--it was part of their religion, I suppose; anyway perhaps they thought it the safest thing to do.”
“That I don’t know. In many cases no doubt they did, because dog’s bones have been found in the barrows; sometimes horses’ bones have been found too, showing that people thought their horses could follow them to the spirit-world, and sometimes, it is thought, that a man’s slaves and even his wife were taken to the grave and killed, so that their spirits might attend his after death.”
“How did they bore the holes in their axes and things?” David asked. “The hole in that hammer was as smooth as if it had been drilled.”
“I daresay it was drilled,” said Uncle John. “Not with a flint tool, perhaps, but most likely with quite a different thing--a hollow stick, like a tube, with the boring end wetted and dipped in sand. With a tool of that sort you can bore a hole in any stone, if you keep on at it long enough, just as you can fine down wood or metal with sandpaper.”
“I suppose you would twirl the stick between your hands and press hard on the top of it,” said David. “And if the stone were hard you would want fine, sharp sand,” said Dick.
“Is there any more about Tig in the book?” Joe asked.
“Yes, I believe there is more--he lived to be a very old man and became Chief in his time, and to him Garff bequeathed the wonderful bronze axe, Skull-pecker. He had much fighting to do; but he beat back his enemies and kept his people’s hunting-grounds and their cattle safe, as long as he lived.”
On the evening of the last day of the holidays Uncle John took the boys into his study and opened the drawer in the cabinet where his arrow-heads were.
“Now,” he said, “I want each of you to choose a flint out of this lot, and keep it as a reminder of what we have been reading about. Each one can have his pick in turn--Dick first, because he was here first, and Joe next and then David, as that is the order in which we met one another.” There were plenty to choose from, and they each chose one of the barbed war-arrows. Then Uncle John said: