something habitual took its place--
that shielding, solacing thought, which was in truth all the world to
him, and was going to make up to him for Eliza's death, for getting old,
and the lonesomeness of a man without chick or child. He would have felt
unutterably forlorn and miserable, he would have shrunk trembling from
the shapes of death and pain that seemed to fill the darkness, but for
this fact, this defence, this treasure, that set him apart from his
fellows and gave him this proud sense of superiority, of a good time
coming in spite of all. Instinctively, as he sat on the bed, he pushed
his bare foot backwards till his heel touched a wooden object that stood
underneath. The contact cheered him at once. He ceased to think about
Eliza, his head was once more full of whirling plans and schemes.

The wooden object was a box that held his money, the savings of a
labourer's lifetime. Seventy-one pounds! It seemed to him an ocean of
gold, never to be exhausted. The long toil of saving it was almost done.
After the Frampton job, he would begin enjoying it, cautiously at first,
taking a bit of work now and again, and then a bit of holiday.

All the savour of life was connected for him with that box. His mind ran
over the constant excitements of the many small loans he had made from
it to his relations and friends. A shilling in the pound interest--he
had never taken less and he had never asked more. He had only lent to
people he knew well, people in the village whom he could look after, and
seldom for a term longer than three months, for to be parted from his
money at all gave him physical pain. He had once suffered great anxiety
over a loan to his eldest brother of thirty pounds. But in the end James
had paid it all back. He could still feel tingling through him the
passionate joy with which he had counted out the recovered sovereigns,
with the extra three half-sovereigns of interest.

Muster Drew indeed! John fell into an angry inward argument against his
suggestion of the savings-bank. It was an argument he had often
rehearsed, often declaimed, and at bottom it all came to this--without
that box under his bed, his life would have sunk to dulness and
decrepitude; he would have been merely a pitiful and lonely old man. He
had neither wife nor children, all for the hoard's sake; but while the
hoard was there, to be handled any hour, he regretted nothing. Besides,
there was the peasant's rooted distrust of offices, and p