The story of their arrival there is amusing. These stones had been employed in the building of a hermitage erected on the spot where they had been found[41] in honour of St. Peter; they had been built into the porch in such a manner that their inscriptions could be read by those who entered the church, and it was here that a neighbouring abbot noticed them, and, about the year 1775, drew the attention of Florez to them. In 1835, at the taking down of the hermitage, another abbot brought them into the town with several other Roman tablets. He had a stone cross made of them and placed in the open space before the church. As time went on the ignorant peasants got the idea that the cross protected them and their cattle from hailstones, and so strong was their superstition that they did not like strangers to approach the cross even to copy the inscription. The stones were at length presented to the Orense Museum by the bishop of the diocese, and in November 1897 three of the leading members of the Orense Archæological Society--Dr. Macias, the late Arturo Vazquez, and Señor Benito F. Alonso--started out to fetch them. Although the Abbot of Nocela had assured them that the peasants of the neighbourhood would offer no objection to their taking the stones,--adding that he had continually preached to them on the folly of their superstition,--these gentlemen thought it prudent to be ready for all emergencies, and took along with them some half-dozen policemen from Ginzo. Thanks to this precaution, they did not return home with battered skulls and broken noses, nor were they stoned to death on the road; yet one or the other fate would certainly have befallen them had they ventured on that expedition unprotected, for the men and boys of Nocela, having got wind of their purpose, gathered together before the porch of the little church and protested against the removal of the stones, while their womenfolk set up an outrageous hullabaloo at the corners of the village streets; and one urchin, thinking to get the better of the policemen, climbed the church tower that he might deliver a surprise attack upon the common enemy. No effort on the part of the archæologists to bring the people to reason met with the least success. “_As pedras son nosas_,” they cried (“The stones are ours”), and even tried to offer bodily resistance. When at length the stones had been taken possession of, there was not a single yoke of oxen to be found in the village, and a cart had to be brought from the neighbouring town of Lodoselo; but even then the peasant driver, terrified by the threats of the people standing round, begged with tears that he might be released from his bargain, and there was nothing for it but to let him go. Finally, the policemen themselves fetched a pair of oxen from the fields and harnessed them to a cart; the stones were put into it, and an old man was persuaded to drive it. Thus, at nightfall the party set out for Ginzo, the wife and daughter of the driver