As they walked homeward over the heath, they came to a place where the cart-tracks went down to the sand-pits, and the way was bare and rough. And Uncle John said: “Now which of you boys has got eyes in his head? Within a dozen yards of where we are standing I have dropped something which once belonged to one of the men of the pit-dwellings. Sixpence for the boy who finds it!” Then they all began to hunt round, but no one could find anything. So Uncle John said: “It is something made of flint-stone. The man to whom it belonged used to shoot with it.” And he kept on saying, while they were looking about: “Dick is hot” or “Joe is warm,” just as if they were playing at Hide the Thimble. At last Joe called out, “I’ve got it!” and he came running up with an arrow-head chipped out of grey flint; and the others crowded round to look at it. And Uncle John showed them how carefully it had been chipped, and how sharp the point and edges were, although it was hundreds and hundreds of years old. And he cut a strong little shoot off a hazel tree, and shortened it, and split it at the end, and showed them how he supposed the man who made the arrow all that long time ago had fixed it to its shaft. Then he took out sixpence, and said to Joe, “If you might choose, which would you rather have? The sixpence or the arrow-head?” And Joe said, “The arrow-head, ever so much rather!” But Uncle John said, “You mayn’t choose now, so take your sixpence. But I’ll tell you what: if you three boys would like to know more about the pit-dwelling people, and about their houses, and how they hunted and all that, I have a book at home in which there is a lot about these things; and I think it would be a good way of filling up some of your spare time these holidays if we were to have some reading out of the book now and then. You might try your hands at building a hut, to see if you could do it as well as the pit-dwelling people did. And you might make some bows and arrows, and even have a try at chipping out flint arrow-heads. We might have a shooting match with the bows and arrows, with another sixpence for the prize. Or, better still, we might have for a prize this flint arrow-head of mine that Joe is so fond of; and give it to the boy who knows most about what we have been reading, when we come to the end of the holidays.” They all agreed that that would be rather a good way of amusing themselves, if the book were interesting. But by the time they got home it was too late to begin; so the reading had to be put off until the next day. On the next day Joe and David went up to Uncle John’s house. As it was a wet afternoon they sat indoors. On the table there was a large brown book; and as soon as they had settled themselves, Uncle John took up the book and began to read. [Illustration] _Chapter the Second_ _THE STORY OF TIG: Tig’s Birthday and his Home_