Word: barnfield
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First Englishman. In 1935 another amateur digger, London Dentist Alvan T. Marston, found a fossil bone 24 ft. below the surface in Swanscombe's Barnfield...
Ever since Marston's find, diggers have haunted Barnfield Pit. Most persistent haunters were the Wymers. Bertram Wymer had been digging for antiquities since he was 19. His wife adopted his hobby on their honeymoon, and son John started digging as soon as he was old enough to handle a small trowel. In Barnfield Pit they found plenty of crude flint tools, but for years neither they nor other diggers found anything very interesting. The great prizes-more bones of "the first Englishman" or clues to the life he led-did not show up in hundreds of tons...
Last July came a change of luck. Son John found a right parietal skull bone. It fitted precisely the two bones found by Marston, and proved that "the first Englishman" (probably a young woman) had an essentially modern brain. A wave of excitement brought hordes of diggers to Barnfield Pit. But still almost nothing was known about how the first Englishmen lived...
...persistent Wymers are not yet satisfied. This weekend, if the gravel is not frozen, they will be back in Barnfield Pit. In time, they hope to find more human bones, and perhaps the burned bones of animals or other clues to the Swans combe way of life. "We've got premonitions," says Bertram. "Besides, I like to get to the bottom of things, you know...
...stone cup she has dug up and failed to destroy. The native vaults out of bed shouting: "She is here! The Great Breast Mother of the World is here!" The cup, it seems, is the one from which Rahabaat drank and drew power; and Irma Barnfield fits the legend of the virgin goddess whose coming will insure October Island a millennium of peace and plenty. In no time, a mass conversion to Christianity takes place, but the natives insist on added sacraments. Irma must periodically spoon out milk from the stone...