neighbourhood gave him even deeper reason for anxiety. In vain he told
lie upon lie about a legacy of some old uncle in the clouds; in vain he
stuck to the foolish and transparent falsehood, with a dogged
pertinacity that appealed, not to reason, but to blows; in vain he made
affirmation weaker by his oath, and oaths quite unconvincing by his
cudgel: no one believed him: and the mystery was rendered more
inexplicable from his evidently nervous state and uneasy terror of
discovery.

He had resolved at the outset, cunningly as he fancied, to change no
more than one piece of gold in the same place; though Bacchus's
undoubtedly proved the rule by furnishing an exception: and the
consequence came to be, that there was not a single shop in the whole
county town, nor a farm-house in all the neighbourhood round, where
Roger Acton had not called to change a sovereign. True, the silver had
seldom been forthcoming; still, he had asked for it; and where in life
could he have got the gold? Many was the rude questioner, whose
curiosity had been quenched in drink; many the insufferable pryer, whom
club-law had been called upon to silence. Meanwhile, Roger steadily kept
on, accumulating silver where he could: for his covetous mind delighted
in the mere semblance of an increase to his store, and took some
untutored numismatic interest in those pretty variations of his
idol--money.

But if Roger's heap increased, so did the whispers and suspicions of the
country round; they daily grew louder, and more clamorous; and soon the
charitable nature of chagrined wonder assumed a shape more heart-rending
to the wretched finder of that golden hoard, than any other care, or
fear, or sin, that had hitherto torn him. It only was a miracle that the
neighbours had not thought of it before; seldom is the world so