And so the vanquished fiend goes on to tell him the future fortunes of his house; and after King William had been duly informed of this adventure, and they had thrown the body of Geomagog into a great pit, they proceeded on their way to Oswestry. In my edition of this history of the Fitz-Warines I have offered some conjectures on the spot to which this legend refers; but on comparing all the circumstances connected with it, I have since been led to the conclusion that the “burnt and ruined” city which had thus been taken possession of by the evil spirits was no other than the ruins of the ancient Uriconium. This story implies that the walls of the town and houses of Uriconium were still standing above ground as late as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and very likely a great portion of them remained thus standing at the time when the author of the History of the Fitz-Warines wrote. But during the centuries which had passed since the city of the Romans became a ruin, it had been undergoing a gradual but continual change from the accumulation of earth. This rising of the level of the ground is always found to have taken place under such circumstances, and may be explained by several causes. In the first place, the floors must have been covered by a mass of rubbish formed by the falling in of the roofs and more perishable parts of the buildings. Vegetation, too, would in the course of years arise, and the walls would stop and cause to be deposited the dust and earthy particles carried about in the atmosphere. This deposit we know by experience to be considerable. It is now little more than three centuries since the dissolution of the monasteries, and we have all had opportunities of observing the depth of earth under which the floors of the monastic ruins now lie, sometimes amounting to as much as three or four feet. What, then, must it have been on an extensive ruin like that of Uriconium, which had stood in that ruined and deserted condition from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the twelfth?