vain--in vain thou triest to rise--Pactolus chains thee down.

Even such is wealth unto the wisest; wealth at its purest source,
exponent of labour and of mind. But, to the frequent fool, heaped with
foulest dross--for the cygnet of Pactolus and those golden sands,
read--the hippopotamus wallowing in the Niger, and smothered in a bay of
mud.




CHAPTER L.

THE CROCK A BLESSING.


THERE was no will found: it is likely Mrs. Quarles had never made one;
she feared death too much, and all that put her in mind of it. So the
next of kin, the only one to have the crock of gold, was Susan Scott, a
good, honest, hard-working woman, whom Jennings, by many arts, had kept
away from Hurstley: her husband, a poor thatcher, sadly out of work
except in ricking time, and crippled in both legs by having fallen from
a hay-stack: and as to the family, it was already as long a flight of
steps as would reach to an ordinary first floor, with a prospect (so the
gossips said) of more in the distance. Susan was a Wesleyan
Methodist--many may think, more the pity: but she neither disliked
church, nor called it steeple-house: only, forasmuch as Hagglesfield was
blessed with a sporting parson, the chief reminders of whose presence in
the parish were strifes perpetual about dues and tithes, it is little
blame or wonder, if the starving sheep went anywhither else for