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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lordmarcovan, post: 3126506, member: 10461&quot;]<font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">...</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><b>So</b> our homeowner stands for a moment, dumbstruck by the discovery of the box.&nbsp; It takes him a moment or two to realize that it must <i>be</i> a box.&nbsp; Then he seizes the shovel up again to dig it the rest of the way out of the bottom and side of the hole.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">This takes some effort, but eventually he has the thing loose, and pries it from the earth.&nbsp; It is quite heavy.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">It is an ancient strongbox of some kind - perhaps of brass, or wood reinforced with brass - though it is difficult to say exactly what the box was made of, since it remains caked with mud.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">It was also reinforced with iron bands, and those have become large, lumpy blobs of rust in the decades if not centuries it spent in the ground.&nbsp; One large mass of rust on the front of the box proves (when hit with the shovel to knock the deposits off) to have once been an iron padlock- of the old heart-shaped kind seen in early 19th century illustrations.&nbsp; The lock holds, though it is severely pitted and deteriorated from rust.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">The box is not particularly large, but it is perhaps the size of the microwave oven in the homeowner&#039;s kitchen.&nbsp; Underneath its remaining coat of greyish soil, it is the green of patinated, long-buried brass (except where he scratched the corner with the shovel), and the orange-brown of rusted iron.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">There is a rectangular brass plate affixed to the top of the box, though if there is any inscription there, it cannot as yet be read beneath the patina and encrustation.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">Grasping the box by the rusted iron ring handles on the sides of it, the homeowner lifts it out of the hole.&nbsp; As he does so, big chunks of rusty flakes fall from the handles, but they hold.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">It is, as mentioned before, extremely heavy.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">Breathlessly, he carries the heavy, dirty, rusty box inside his house.</span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600"><br /></span></font></font></p><p><font face="Georgia"><font size="5"><span style="color: #006600">...</span></font></font>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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