"I see you have found the left thigh-bone," I remarked, observing that
this did not appear in the list.
"Yes," said the sergeant; "that turned up yesterday evening in a big
pond called Baldwin's Pond in the Sand-pit plain, near Little Monk
Wood."
"Is that near here?" I asked.
"In the forest up Loughton way," was the reply.
I made a note of the fact (on which the sergeant looked as if he was
sorry he had mentioned it), and then turned my attention to a general
consideration of the bones before examining them in detail. Their
appearance would have been improved and examination facilitated by a
thorough scrubbing, for they were just as they had been taken from their
respective resting-places, and it was difficult to decide whether their
reddish-yellow colour was an actual stain or due to a deposit on the
surface. In any case, as it affected them all alike, I thought it an
interesting feature and made a note of it. They bore numerous traces of
their sojourn in the various ponds from which they had been recovered,
but these gave me little help in determining the length of time during
which they had been submerged.
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