rather an interesting occupation to become stealthily acquainted with the
wards of his mother's simple key (not in the least like Chubb's patent),
and to get one that would do its work equally well; and also to arrange a
little drama by which he would escape suspicion, and run no risk of
forfeiting the prospective hundred at his father's death, which would be
convenient in the improbable case of his _not_ making a large fortune in
the "Indies."

First, he spoke freely of his intention to start shortly for Liverpool
and take ship for America; a resolution which cost his good mother some
pain, for, after Jacob the idiot, there was not one of her sons to whom
her heart clung more than to her youngest-born, David. Next, it appeared
to him that Sunday afternoon, when everybody was gone to church except
Jacob and the cowboy, was so singularly favourable an opportunity for
sons who wanted to appropriate their mothers' guineas, that he half
thought it must have been kindly intended by Providence for such
purposes. Especially the third Sunday in Lent; because Jacob had been
out on one of his occasional wanderings for the last two days; and David,
being a timid young man, had a considerable dread and hatred of Jacob, as
of a large personage who went about habitually with a pitchfork in his
hand.

Nothing could be easier, then, than for David on this Sunday afternoon to
decline going to church, on the ground that he was going to tea at Mr.
Lunn's, whose pretty daughter Sally had been an early flame of his, and,
when the church-goers were at a safe distance, to abstract the guineas
from their wooden box and slip them into a small canvas bag--nothing
easier than to call to the cowboy that he was going, and tell him to keep
an eye on the house for fear of Sunday tramps. David thought it would be
easy, too, to get to a small thicket and bury his bag in a hole he had