Ford stood in the field of yellow barley stubble and gazed at the huge plate. His hands began to shake. A tremendous and almost unbearable excitement started boiling up inside him and it was not easy for him to hide it. But he did his best.
"Some sort of a dish," he said.
Butcher was kneeling on the ground beside the hole. "Must be pretty old," he said.
"Could be old," Ford said. "But it's all rusted up and eaten away."
"That don't look like rust to me," Butcher said. "That greenish stuff isn't rust. It's something else. . ."
"It's green rust," Ford said rather superbly, and that ended the discussion.
Butcher, still on his knees, was poking about casually in the now three-feet-wide hole with his gloved hands. "There's another one down here," he said.
Instantly, Ford laid the great dish on the ground. He knelt beside Butcher, and within minutes they had unearthed a second large green-encrusted plate. This one was a shade smaller than the first, and deeper. More of a bowl than a dish.
Ford stood up and held the new find in his hands.
Another heavy one. And now he knew for certain they were on to something absolutely tremendous. They were on to Roman Treasure, and almost without question it was pure silver. Two things pointed to its being pure silver. First the weight, and second, the particular type of green crust caused by oxidation.
How often is a piece of Roman silver discovered in the world?
Almost never any more. And had pieces as large as this ever been unearthed before?
Ford wasn't sure, but he very much doubted it.
Worth millions it must be.
Worth literally millions of pounds.
His breath, coming fast, was making little white clouds in the freezing atmosphere.
"There's still more down here, Mr Ford," Butcher was saying. "I can feel bits of it all over the place. You'll need the spade again."
The third piece they got out was another large plate, somewhat similar to the first. Ford placed it in the barley stubble with the other two.
When Butcher felt the first flake of snow upon his cheek he looked up and saw over to the north-east a great white curtain drawn across the sky, a solid wall of snow flying forward on the wings of the wind.
"Here she comes!" he said, and Ford looked round and saw the snow moving upon them and he said, "It's a blizzard. It's a filthy stinking blizzard!"
The two men stared at the blizzard as it raced across the fens towards them. Then it was on them, and all around was snow and snowflakes in the eyes and ears and mouth and down the neck and all around. And when Butcher glanced down at the ground a few seconds later it was already white.
"That's all we want," Ford said. "A filthy rotten stinking blizzard," and he shivered and sunk his sharp and foxy face deeper into the collar of his coat. "Come on," he said. "See if there's any more."
Butcher knelt down again and poked around in the soil, then in the slow and casual manner of a man having a lucky dip in a barrel of sawdust, he pulled out another plate and held it out to Ford. Ford took it and placed it with the other three. Now Ford knelt down beside Butcher and began to dip into the soil with him.
For a whole hour the two men stayed out there digging and scratching in that little three-foot patch of soil. And during that hour they found and laid upon the ground beside them no less than thirty-four separate pieces! There were dishes, bowls, goblets, spoons, ladles and several other things, all of them crusted over but each one recognizable for what it was. And all the while the blizzard swirled around them and the snow gathered in little mounds upon their caps and on their shoulders and the flakes melted on their faces so that rivers of icy water trickled down their necks. A large globule of half-frozen liquid dangled continually, like a snow drop, from the end of Ford's pointed nose.
They worked in silence. It was too cold to speak. And as one precious article after the other was unearthed, Ford laid them carefully on the ground in rows, pausing every now and then to wipe the snow away from a dish or a spoon which was in danger of being completely covered.
At last Ford said, "That's the lot, I think."
"Yes."
Ford stood up and stamped his feet on the ground. "Got a sack in the tractor?" he said, and while Butcher walked over to fetch the sack, he turned and gazed upon the four-and-thirty pieces lying in the snow at his feet. He counted them again. If they were silver, which they surely must be, and if they were Roman, which they undoubtedly were, then this was a discovery that would rock the world.
Butcher called to him from the tractor, "It's only a dirty old sack."
"It'll do."