o much?"

"Daughter, daughter, I tell you plainly, he that gives me gold, gives me
all things: I wish I found the crock the de--the angel, I mean, brought
me."

"O father," murmured Grace, "do not breathe the wicked wish; even if you
found it without any evil angel's help, would the gold be rightfully
your own?"

"Tush, girl!" said her mother; "get the gold, feed the children, and
then to think about the right."

"Ay, Grace, first drive away the toils and troubles of this life," added
Roger, "and then one may try with a free mind to discover the comforts
of religion."

Poor Grace only looked up mournfully, and answered nothing.

CHAPTER IX.

THE POACHER.

A SUDDEN knock at the door here startled the whole party, and
Mary Acton, bustling up, drew the bolt to let in--first, a lurcher, one
Rover to wit, our gaunt ember-loving friend of Chapter II.; secondly,
Thomas Acton, full flush, who carried the old musket on his shoulder,
and seemed to have something else under his smock; and thirdly, Ben
Burke, a personage of no small consequence to us, and who therefore
deserves some specific introduction.

Big Ben, otherwise Black Burke, according to the friendship or the
enmity of those who named him, was a huge, rough, loud, good-humoured,
dare-devil sort of an individual, who lived upon what he considered
common rights. His dress was of the mongrel character, a well-imagined
cross between a ploughman's and a sailor's; the bottle-green frock of
the former, pattern-stitched about the neck as ingeniously as if a tribe
of Wisconsin squaws had tailored it--and mighty fishing boots, vast as
any French postillion's, acting as a triton's tail to symbolize the
latter: a red cotton handkerchief (dirty-red of course, as all things
else were dirty, for cleanliness had little part in Ben), occupied just
now the more native region of a halter; and a rusty fur cap crowned the
poacher; I repeat it--crowned the poacher; for in his own estimation,
and that of many others too, Ben was, if not quite an emperor, at least
an Agamemnon, a king of men, a natural human monarch; in truth, he felt
as much pride in the title Burke the Poacher (and with as great justice
too, for aught I know), as Ali-Hamet-Ghee-the-Thug eastwards, or
William-of-Normandy-the-Conqueror westwards, may be thought respectively
to have cherished, on the score of their murderous and thievish
surnames.

There was no small good, after all, in poor Ben; and a mo