"So what do we do with all this?" Chester said, indicating the filled buckets in the wheelbarrows.

"Lug it to the surface and tip it in the gully at the side."

"Is it all right to do that?"

"Well, if anyone asks I just say I'm digging a trench for a war game," Will replied. Taking a swig from his bottle, he swallowed noisily. "What do they care, anyway? To them we're just a bunch of dumb kids with buckets and shovels," he added dismissively.

"They would care if they saw this — this isn't what ordinary kids do," Chester said, his eyes flicking around the chamber. "Why do you do it, Will?"

"Take a look at these."

Will gently lifted a plastic crate for the side of his chair and onto his lap. He then proceeded to take out a series of objects, leaning across to place them one by one on the tabletop. Among them were Codswallop bottles — Victorian soft-drink bottles with strangely shaped necks that contained a glass marble — and a whole host of medicine bottles of different sizes and colors, all with a beautiful frosty bloom from their time in the ground.

"And these," Will said reverentially as he produced an entire range of Victorian jars of differing sizes with decorative lids and names in swirly old writing that Chester had never seen before. Indeed, Chester seemed to be genuinely interested, picking up each jar in turn and asking Will questions about how old they were and where exactly he'd dug them up. Encouraged, Will continued until every single find from his recent excavations was laid out on the table. Then he sat back, carefully watching his newfound friend's reaction.

"What's this stuff?" Chester asked, probing a small pile of heavily rusted metal with his finger.

"Rosehead nails. Probably eighteenth century. If you look carefully, you can see that each one is different, because they were handmade by—"

But in his excitement Chester had already moved down the table to where something else had caught his eye.

"This is so cool," he said, holding up and turning a small perfume bottle so that the light played through its wonderful cobalt blue and mauve tones. "Incredible that someone just chucked it out."

"Yeah, isn't it?" Will agreed. "You can have it if you want."

"No!" Chester said, astonished by the offer.

"Yeah, go on, I've got another one just like it at home."

"Hey, that's great… thanks," Chester said, still admiring the bottle with such rapture that he didn't see Will break into the widest grin imaginable. Will practically lived for the moments he could show his father his latest crop of finds, but this was more than he could have ever hoped for — someone his own age who seemed to be sincerely interested in the fruits of his labors. He surveyed the cluttered tabletop and felt a swell of pride. This was what he lived for. He often pictured himself reaching back into the past and plucking out these little pieces of discarded history. To Will the past was so much nicer a place than the grim reality of the present. He sighed as he began to replace items in the crate.

"I haven't found any fossils down here yet… anything really old… but you never know your luck," he said, glancing wistfully in the direction of the branch tunnels. "That's the thrill of it all."

Dr. Burrows whistled, swinging his briefcase in time with his brisk pace. He rounded the corner at precisely 6:30 p.m., as he always did, and his house came into view. It was one of many crammed into Broadlands Avenue — regimented brick boxes with just enough room for a family of four. The only saving grace was that this side of the road backed onto the Common, so at least the house had views of a big open space, even if one was forced to see them from rooms barely large enough to swing a mouse, let alone a cat.

As he let himself in and stood in the hall, sorting the old books and magazines from his briefcase, his son was not far behind. At breakneck speed Will careened onto Broadlands Avenue on his bicycle, his shovel glinting under the first red glow of the newly lit streetlights. He skillfully slalomed between the white lines in the middle of the road and banked wildly as he shot through the open gate, his brakes reaching a squealing crescendo as he pulled up under the carport. He dismounted, locked up his bicycle, and entered the house.

"Hi, Dad," he said to his father, who was now poised awkwardly just inside the living room, still holding his open briefcase in one hand as he watched something on television.

Dr. Burrows was unarguably the biggest influence in his son's life. A casual comment or snippet of information from his father could inspire Will to embark on the wildest and most extreme "investigations," usually involving ludicrous amounts of digging. Dr. Burrows always managed to be "in at the kill" on any of his son's digs if he suspected there was going to be something of true archaeological value unearthed, but most of the time he preferred to bury his nose in the books he kept down in the cellar, his cellar. Here he could escape family life, losing himself in dreams of echoing Greek temples and magnificent Roman colosseums.

"Oh, yes, hello, Will," he answered absentmindedly after a long pause, still absorbed in the television. Will looked past his father to where his mother was sitting, equally mesmerized by the program.

"Hi, Mum," Will said and then left, not waiting for a response.

Mrs. Burrows's eyes were glued to an unexpected and rather fraught turn of events in the ER. "Hello," she eventually replied, although Will had already left the room.

Will's parents had first met at college when Mrs. Burrows had been a bubbly media student dead set on a career in television.

Unfortunately, these days television filled her life for a completely different reason. She watched it with an almost fanatical devotion, juggling schedules with a pair of VCRs when her favorite programs, of which there were so very many, clashed.

If one has a mental snapshot of a person, an image that is first recalled when one thinks of them, then Mrs. Burrows's would be of her lying sideways in her favorite armchair, a row of remotes neatly lined up on the arm and her feet resting on a footstool topped with television pages ripped from the newspapers. There she sat, day after day, week after week, the flickering light of the small screen, occasionally twitching a leg just to let people know she was still alive.

As he did every night, Will had beaten a path to the kitchen or, more specifically, the fridge. He was opening the door as he spoke, but didn't so much as glance at the other person in the room as he acknowledged her presence.

"Hi, sis," Will said. "What are we having for dinner?" I'm starved."

"Ah, the mud creature returns," Rebecca said to him. "I had the funniest feeling you'd show up about now." She rammed the fridge door shut to stop her brother from nosing inside and before he had a chance to complain, thrust an empty packet into his hands. "Sweet-and-sour chicken, with rice and some vegetable stuff. It was on sale, two for one, at the supermarket."

Will looked at the picture on the packet and, without comment, passed it back to her.

"So how's the latest dig going?" she asked, just as the microwave have a ting.

"Not great — we've hit a layer of sandstone."

"We?" Rebecca shot him a quizzical glance as she took a dish out of the microwave. "I'm sure you just said we, Will. You don't mean Dad's working on it with you, do you? Not during museum hours?"

"No, Chester from school is giving me a hand."

Rebecca had just placed a second dish in the microwave and very nearly trapped her fingers in the door as she was closing it. "You mean you actually asked somebody to help you? Well, that's a first. Thought you didn't trust anybody with your 'projects.»