and more, slap into
Jonathan's hands without his knowing how it got there; and, even when
the game with the ghost was hit upon, 'twas hard to know how to do it
clever. Hyssop wanted to hide golden sovereigns at Dunnabridge; but her
uncle, with wonnerful wit, pointed out that they'd all be dated; and to
get three hundred sovereigns and more a hundred years old could never
have been managed. Then old Thomas, who was in the secret, of course,
and played the part of Miser Brimpson, and got five pounds for doing it
so clever, and another five after from his master, when the stuff was
found--he thought upon trinkums and jewels; and finally Mrs. Stonewer,
as had a friend in the business, said that Sheffield plate would do the
trick. And she was right. The plate was bought for three hundred and
eighty pound, and kept close at White Works till 'twas known that
Jonathan meant to go away and bide away some days. Then my mother drove
across with it; and Thomas made the cases wi' old rotten boards, and
they drove a slant hole under the cobbles, and got all vitty again long
afore young Drake came back home.

"Me and Jonathan was wedded in the fall of that year," said my mother to
me when she told the tale. "And, come the next New Year's Night, he was
at our chamber window as the clock struck twelve, and bided there
looking out into the yard for an hour, keen as the hawk that he was. He
thought I must be asleep; but well I knowed he was seeking for an old
man in a beaver hat wi' a long white beard, and well I knowed he'd never
see him again. Of course your father took good care not to tell me the
next morning that he'd been on the lookout for the ghost."

And my mother, in her own last days, oft dwelt on that trick; and
sometimes she'd say, as the time for meeting father got nearer and
nearer, "I wonder if 'twill make any difference in heaven, where no
secrets be hid?" And, knowing father so well as I had, I felt very sure
as it might make a mighty lot of difference. So, in my crafty way, I
hedged, and told mother that, for my part, I felt sartain there were
some secrets that wouldn't even be allowed to come out at Judgment Day,
for fear of turning heaven into t'other place; and that this was one of
'em. She always used to fret at that, however.

"I want for it to come out," she'd say. "And, if Jonathan don't know, I
shall certainly tell him. I've kept it in long enough, and I can't trust
myself to do it no more. He've got to know,