They taught little, and they attracted hordes of marginally interested kids who jumped from contrivance to contrivance, comprehending nothing worth knowing. No, this was the way a museum ought to look, as old-fashioned as it was. He even liked the smell: a chalky, flinty mixture of old, worked stone and floor polish.

Their progress toward the Poundbury exhibit was slow and halting. Professor Hall-Waddington paused at almost every object they passed to murmur a few words about it and, if it was not encased, to run a hand lovingly over it.

"Fragments of a bell mold. Cast in 1717. Don’t see many of these."

"Ah," said Gideon.

"Romano-British sarcophagus here. Found in 1925. Body’d been completely packed in chalk, except for the head. What do you make of that? Quite curious."

"Huh," Gideon said. "Interesting."

"And these are the old borough stocks. Used to stand against the side of the town hall. They’d put their feet in the holes, of course. Do you have any idea when that all began?"

"Uh, no, I’m afraid I don’t," Gideon said.

"Ha! Thought you wouldn’t. Have a guess."

"Sixteenth century?"

" Six teenth century!" cried Professor Hall-Waddington, delighted. "My word, no! It’s from Anglo-Saxon times. And in 1376, Parliament decreed every town had to have a set of them. Decree’s never been abolished, you know. This is ours."

"Is that so?" Gideon breathed politely, looking with secret longing toward the case in which he knew the famous skullcap lay.

The old man shuffled a few steps on, but stopped rather firmly ten feet short of the goal. "Now here," he said, placing his hand tenderly on a monstrous, grimy pair of bellows standing on end against the wall, as if some fifty-foot giant of a blacksmith had leaned it there for a few seconds while he had a sip from a bucket of water. "Now here are the actual bellows from the Downtown Forge."