And so it proved, for as the pieces were carefully picked up and passed on for the doctor to examine, he found more of the little eighth or quarter of an inch long scraps of wire, and in addition, here and there in the fragments of cement, tiny wedge-like tacks of the precious metal. "Doesn't seem much," said Mark, "after all. It would take ten times as many scraps as we have found to weigh a sovereign." "I don't know about your calculation," said the doctor, speaking cheerfully now, for his angry feeling had passed away. "From one point of view we might say the whole find was of no value, but from another-- the archaeological point of view--valuable indeed. But by the way, boys, I don't like those two blacks looking so glum at us. It's almost as if they felt contempt for the white man seeming so anxious to find gold." "Here's another bit, sir," cried Buck Denham. "The powder chucked it right over here, close to the wall." As he spoke the man held a good-sized fragment of the cement pressed against his side with one hand, and began to climb out of the hole. "No, no, thank you, sir," he said, as Mark stooped down to take the piece of cement; and then in a whisper, "I wanted for them blacks not to see it; but they have got eyes like needles, and I think they did. Don't look round at them. These chaps have got ideas of their own. See that, doctor, sir?" He turned the fragment over now, as he stood with his back turned to Mak and the pigmy. "See that, sir?" "Yes," said the doctor; "that explains what I was talking about just now. Their ideas are that to disturb the bones of the dead may mean mischief or injury to themselves. I believe that is what they think. Look, Sir James;" and he held the fragment so that his chief could see that, fixed in the cement like a fossil, there was a large portion of a human bone. "Yes," said Sir James. "Possibly there has been fighting here." "No, sir, I don't think that," said the doctor. "What we have found before, and this, seem to point to the fact that we have hit upon one of the old dwellings, for it is the custom among some of the nations to bury their dead beneath the floor of their homes, and to cover them over with a fresh floor before another family can occupy the old place." "Fresh floor?" cried Mark eagerly. "Yes, and we have seen confirmation of what I have read, for these scraps of gold and the bone must have been covered-in with the wet cement for it to be bedded within like this." "This is rather gruesome, doctor," said Sir James. "Yes, sir, but I think you must agree that it is very interesting, teaching us as it does the habits and customs of people who lived many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years ago." "Yes," said Sir James; "but it is rather ghoulish to disturb their remains. What are you going to do now?"