ation of that
one idea which now possessed him--a crock of gold. When he put together
one thing and another, he considered it almost certain that Ben had
flung away among the lot no mere honey-pot, but perhaps indeed a
money-pot: Burke hadn't half the cunning of a child; more fool he, and
maybe so much the better for me, thought money-bitten, selfish Roger.
Thus, in the night's hot imaginations, he resolved to find the spoil; to
will, was then to do: to do, was then to conquer. However, Nature's
sweet restorer came at last, and, when he woke, the idea had sobered
down--last night's fancies were preposterous. So, it was with a heavy
heart he got up later than his wont--no work before him, nothing to do
till the afternoon, when he might see Sir John, except it be to dig a
bit in his little marshy garden. When Grace ran to the Hall, Roger was
going forth to dig.

Now, I know quite well that the reader is as fully aware as I am, what
is about to happen; but it is impossible to help the matter. If the
heading of this chapter tells the truth, a "discovery" of some sort is
inevitable. Let us preliminarize a thought or two, if thereby we can
hang some shadowy veil of excuse over a too naked mystery. First and
foremost, truth is strange, stranger, _et-cetera_; and this
_et-cetera_, pregnant as one of Lyttleton's, intends to add the
superlative strangest, to the comparative stranger of that seldom-quoted
sentiment. To every one of us, in the course of our lives, something
quite as extraordinary has befallen more than once. What shall we say of
omens, warnings, forebodings? What of the most curious runs of luck; the
most whimsical freaks of fortune; the unaccountable things that happen
round us daily, and no one marvels at them, till he reads of them in
print? Even as Macpherson, ingenious, if not ingenuous, gathered Ossian
from the lips of Highland hussifs, and made the world with modern Attila
to back it, wonder at the stores that are hived on old wives' tongues;
even so might any other literary, black-smith hammer from the ore of
common gossip a regular Vulcan's net of superstitious "facts." Never yet
was uttered ghost story, that did not breed four others; every one at
table is eager to record his, or his aunt's, experience in that line;
and the mass of queer coincidences, inexplicable incidents, indubitable
seeings, hearings, doings, and sufferings; which you and I have heard of
in this popular vein of talk, would amply excus