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The Crock of Gold - A Rural Novel by Martin Farquhar Tupper
page 93 of 215 (43%)
fellow--Thomas Acton, Ben Burke's friend: why was he away so long,
hiding out of the country? they wondered.

The suspected Damon and Pythias had gone a county off to certain fens,
and were, during this important week, engaged in a long process of
ensnaring ducks.

Old Gaffer White had muttered something to Gossip Heartley, which Dick
the Tanner overheard, wherein Tom Acton and a gun, and Burke, and
burglary, and throats cut, and bags of gold, were conspicuous
ingredients: so that Roger Acton's own dear Tom, that eagle-eyed and
handsome better image of himself, stood accused, before his quailing
father's face, of robbery and murder.

Both--both darlings, dead Annie's little orphaned pets, thus stricken by
one stone to infamy! Grace, scouted as a hussey, an outcast, a bad girl,
a wanton--blessed angel! Thomas--generous boy--keenly looked for, in his
near return, to be seized by rude hands, manacled, and dragged away, and
tried on suspicion as a felon--for what? that crock of gold. Yet Roger
heard it all, knew it all, writhed at it all, as if scorpions were
lashing him; but still he held on grimly, keeping that bad secret.
Should he blab it out, and so be poor again, and lose the crock?

That our labourer's changed estate influenced his bodily health, under
this accumulated misery and desperate excitement, began to be made
manifest to all. The sturdy husbandman was transformed into a tremulous
drunkard; the contented cottager, into a querulous hypochondriac; the
calm, religious, patient Christian, into a tumultuous blasphemer. Could
all this be, and even Roger's iron frame stand up against the battle!
No, the strength of Samson has been shorn. The crock has poured a
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