have put it in his head: what if one or other of those honey-jars, so
flung here and there among the rushes, were in fact another sort of
"Savings-bank"--a crock of gold? It was a thrilling thought--his very
dream, too; and the lot of shillings, and the shawl--ay, and the
inquest, and the rumours how that Mrs. Quarles had come to her end
unfairly, and no hoards found--and--and the honey-pots missing. Ha! at
any rate he'd have a search to-morrow. No bugbear now should hinder him;
money's money; he'd ask no questions how it got there. His own bit of
garden lay the nearest to Pike Island, and who knows but Ben might have
slung a crock this way? It wouldn't do to ask him, though--for Burke
might look himself, and get the crock--was Roger's last and selfish
thought, before he fell asleep.

As to Mrs. Acton, she, poor woman, had her own thoughts, fearful ones,
about that shawl, and Ben's mysterious adventure. No cloudy love of
mammon had overspread her mind, to hide from it the hideousness of
murder; in her eyes, blood was terrible, and not the less so that it
covered gold. She remembered at the inquest--be sure she was there among
the gossips--the facts, so little taken notice of till now, the keys in
the cupboard, where the honey-pots were not, and how Jonathan Floyd had
seen something on the lake, and the marks of a man's hand on the throat;
and, God forgive her for saying so, but Mr. Jennings was a little,
white-faced man. How wrong was it of Roger to have burnt that shawl! how
dull of Ben not to have suspected something! but then the good fellow
suspects nobody, and, I dare say, now doesn't know my thoughts. But
Roger does, more shame for him; or why burn the shawl? Ah! thought she,
with all the gossip rampart in her breast, if I could only have taken it
to the Hall myself, what a stir I should have caused! Yes, she would
have reaped a mighty field of glory by originating such a whirlwind of
inquiries and surmises. Even now, so attractive was the mare's nest, she