in front of me. I took him to be a visitor who had come out for an early bathe, probbaly a sojourner at one of the old coastguard cottages just beyond the hills, where people stay in summer, for he wore sandals and a shapeless dressing-gown or robe of purple. He was a man well advanced in years and his expression, without being in anyway distinguished, was dignified and shrewd. His odd attire might be excused in circumstances where men relax, but his salutation challenged resentment, until I remembered that the ground on which we stood and the eternal hills around were an enduring memorial to those dim ages when our race was shaping in the mould. Here on every side the landmarks are the temples or the citadels, the graves or the pleasances of contending races who achieved their destinies and are no more, while to this day that ancient leveller, the ploughman, mixes their bones impartially and lays bare their household gods without reverence and scarcely with curiosity.
"Hail, Briton!" had been his greeting.
I stared for a moment and then smiled to myself. "Here," I thought, "is one of those enthusiasts who lose themselves in the past. Doubtless he has a theory about some obscure fosse or vallum, and in the everlasting consideration of it he has become absent-minded." For the moment, I say, I was taken aback; then, observing that the lines of his face were not destitute of humour, I had the impulse to recall him to the present by responding in like strain.
"Greetings," I accordingly replied with fitting gravity. "Greeting, Imperial Rome!"
Instead of betraying any confusion or surprise, my new acquaintance inclined his head slightly, as though receiving homage that was due.
"This spot pleases me well, as it ever did," he mused aloud. "It was here that our prows first touched after
