ask my opinion we're in for
settled weather."

Nicky-Nan's business had taken time--some twenty minutes in excess of
his calculations, as a glance at the sky informed him. (He carried
no watch.) He hurried home in a twitter of nervousness, which
increased as he drew near to his front door. In the passage he
stumbled against a pail of water, all but upsetting it, and swore
under his breath at his evil luck, which had deferred Mrs
Penhaligon's weekly scrubbing to Tuesday (Bank Holiday being a _dies
non_).

On entering the parlour he drew a breath of relief. No one had
visited it, to disturb it. The threadbare tablecloth rested as he
had spread it, covering the piles of gold; the tattered scrap of
carpet, too, hiding (so far as it might) the scree of fallen rubbish.

On this rubbish, after assuring himself that his treasure was safe,
he fell to work with the sieve; making as little noise as might be,
because by this time Mrs Penhaligon had begun operations on the brick
flooring of the passage. Mrs Penhaligon's father had been a groom in
Squire Tresawna's service, and she had a trick of hissing softly
while she scrubbed, as grooms do in washing-down and curry combing
their horses. He could hear the sound whenever her brush intromitted
its harsh _whoosh-whoosh_ and she paused to apply fresh soap.
So they worked, the man and the woman--both kneeling--with the thin
door between.

Nicky-Nan felt no weariness as yet. He used his coal-scraper to fill
the sieve, and shook the fine powdery lime into one heap, and gently
tilted the coarse residuum upon another, after searching it carefully
over. At the end of an hour's labour he had added two guinea-pieces
and nine sovereigns to his collection.

He vaguely remembered having been told--long ago by somebody--that
sovereigns had first come into use back in the last century, not long
after the battle of Waterloo; that in more ancient times gold had
been paid in guineas; that guineas were then worth much more than
their face value, because of the great amount of paper money; that
Jews went about buying them up for twenty-three or twenty-four
shillings; that, over at Troy, a Jew had been murdered and robbed of
a lot of these coins by the landlord of a public-house.

He reasoned from this--and rightly, no doubt--that the Old Doctor had
started his hoard in early life, when Boney was threatening to invade
us; and had kept up the habit in later and more prosperous years,