road.  At a distance Hauptmann perceived one who importunately offered a small object to the sightseers and was as regularly repulsed.  Without waiting for the professor, who stood at attention while Frauelein Linda sketched, this beggar or pedlar approached and prayed to be allowed to show a rare and veritable object of antiquity.  A gruff refusal had already been given when she pleaded that they hear the peasant talk, and inspect his treasure.  “Who knows, Herr Professor, but it might be Lombard?” “Wohlan,” he replied, and sullenly took the proffered spearhead.  It was of iron, patined rather than rusted, Lombard in form, and of evident antiquity.  Hauptmann gave it a nearsighted look and was about to return it contemptuously when the peasant urged, “But look again, sir, there are letters, a rarity.”  “I dare you to read them,” cried Frauelein Linda, and the Professor read painfully and copied roughly in his notebook a short inscription in some Runic alphabet.  A scowl followed the reading and the abrupt challenge “Where did you find this piece?” “In the fields, digging, Padrone,” was the answer, “where I dug up also this,” displaying a bronze clasp of unquestionable Lombard workmanship.  “Bravo,” exclaimed Linda, “now perhaps we shall know more about your dear Lombards.  I congratulate you, Herr Professor, from the heart.”  “Aber nein,” he growled back, “there were monuments enough already, and this is only a bore, for I must buy and publish it.  Others too may be found in the same field, and Lombard will become a popular pastime.  It is disgusting; compassionate me.  It was the single language that permitted truly a-priori approach.  It would be almost a duty to suppress these accursed runes for the sake of scientific method.  But no; the harm is done.  We must be patient.”

What the Herr Professor said and continued to say as he drove a hard bargain with the peasant was but half the story.  A glance at the runes had shown an awful double consonant, and, as if that were not enough, an appalling modified vowel.  By a single word scratched by the untutored hand of a rude warrior the most ingenious linguistic hypothesis of our times was shattered beyond hope of repair.  The spearhead was Lombard, and Lombard, dire reflection to one who had gained fame by maintaining the contrary, belonged to the West Germanic group of the Teutonic tongues.  Wild thoughts went through his head.  He recalled that Paris had seemed worth a mass, and considered a plenary retraction with a facsimile publication of the runes.  But as he pondered this course the inexpediency of sacrificing so fair a theory to this mere brute fact seemed indisputable.  He thought also of ascribing the doubled consonant and the modified vowel to the illiterate blundering of the spearman who chiselled the letters.  But as his fingers traced the sharp and purposeful strokes he realised that such a contention would be laughed out of the philological court.  For a mad moment he thought