nd. 'Twas even so with Lucifer afore him.
If you told him--Jonathan--this news, he'd rather let the money go than
set off ghost-hunting in cold blood. Yet there it is: and a
humbler-minded fashion of chap, with the Lord on his side, and a
trustful heart in his bosom, might very like recover all them tubs of
cash the miser come by."

"And then he'd have thousands to my poor tens," said Hyssop. "Not that
he'd ever come back to me now, I reckon."

But, all the same, she knowed by the look in Jonathan's eye when they
met, that he loved her still, and that his silly, proud heart was
hungering after her yet, though he'd rather have been drawn under a
harrow than show a spark of what was burning there.

And so, upon this nonsense about a buried treasure she set to work again
to use her brains, and see if there might be any road out of the trouble
by way of Miser Brimpson's ghost.

What she did, none but them as helped her ever knew, until the story
comed round to me; but 'twas the cleverest thing that ever I heard of a
maiden doing, and it worked a wonder. In fact, I can't see but a single
objection to the plot, though that was a serious thing for the girl. It
lay in the fact that there had to be a secret between Hyssop and her
husband; and she kept it close as the grave until the grave itself
closed over him. Yet 'twas an innocent secret, too; and, when all's
said, 'tisn't a wedded pair in five hundred as haven't each their one
little cupboard fast locked, with the key throwed away.

Six months passed by, and Jonathan worked as only he knowed how to work,
and tried to forget his sad disappointment by dint of toil. Early and
late he labored, and got permission to reclaim a bit of moor for a
"newtake," and so added a very fair three acres to his farm. He noticed
about this time that his hind, Parsons, did oft drag up the subject of
Miser Brimpson Drake; and first Jonathan laughed, and then he was
angered, and bade Thomas hold his peace. But, though a very obedient and
humble sort of man, Parsons would hark back to the subject, and tell how
his father had known a man who was own brother to a miser; and how, when
the miser died, his own brother had seen him clear as truth in the
chimley-corner of his room three nights after they'd buried him; and how
they made search, and found, not three feet from where the ghost had
stood, a place in the wall with seventeen golden sovereigns hid in it,
and a white witch's cure for glanders