Yes, fear, and with good reason too for fear; "nothing easier, nothing
safer," said his black adviser; how easily for bodily pains, how safely
for chances of detection, was he getting at the promised crock of gold!

"Mr. Jennings! Mr. Simon! where in the world was Mr. Jennings?" nobody
knew; he must have gone out somewhere. Strange, too--and left his hat
and great-coat.

Here's a general for an ambuscade; Oh, Simon, Simon! you have had the
whole day to think of it--how is it that both you and your dark friend
overlooked in your calculations the certainty of search, and the chance
of a discovery? The veriest school-boy, when he hid himself, would hide
his hat. I am half afraid that you are in that demented state, which
befits the wretch ordained to perish.

But where is Mr. Jennings? that was the continued cry for four agonizing
hours of dread and difficulty. Sarah, the still-room maid, was sitting
at her work, unluckily in Mrs. Quarles's room; she had come in shortly
after Simon's secret entry; there she sat, and he dared not stir. And
they looked every where--except in the right place; to do the devil
justice, it was a capital hiding-corner that; rooms, closets, passages,
cellars, out-houses, gardens, lofts, tenements, and all the "general
words," in a voluminous conveyance, were searched and searched in vain;
more than one groom expected (hoped is a truer word) to find Mr.
Jennings hanging by a halter from the stable-lamp; more than one
exhilarated labourer, hastily summoned for the search, was sounding the
waters with a rake and rope, in no slight excitement at the thought of
fishing up a deceased bailiff.

It was a terrible time for the ensconced one: sometimes he thought of