Secrets wait beneath soil. Gently inserting a 4’ steel probe through a layer of ash, Ezra Lane pushed down 2’, felt hard resistance, and heard a telltale report run up the shaft. Not the clink of glass, nor the clang of metal, but the dull thud of stoneware.
Lane’s mouth dried to cotton. “It sounded good. So good. I couldn’t be certain, but somewhere inside I already knew we would make the find of a lifetime.”
Out of the ground, Lane pulled an intact cache of stoneware—nine whiskey jugs buried roughly 100-150 years in the past, with the prize specimen possibly worth several thousand dollars. Find of a lifetime, indeed.…