securely, underneath the grouted floor,
close beside the fire in the chimney-corner: it was now nearly midnight,
and he went to bed.

Hardly had he tumbled in, after pulling on a nightcap of the flagon,
than the dread idea overtook him that his treasure might be melted! Was
there ever such a fool as he? Well, well, to think he could fling his
purse on the fire! What a horrid thought! Metallurgy was a science quite
unknown to Roger; he only considered gold as heavy as lead, and
therefore probably as fusible: so down he bustled, made another hole, a
deeper one too this time, in the floor under the dresser, where,
exhausted with his toil and care, he deposited the crock by four in the
morning--and so retired once more.

All in vain--nobody ever knew when Black Burke might be returning from
his sporting expeditions--and that beast of a lurcher would be sure to
be creeping in this morning, and would scratch it up, and his brute of a
master would get it all! This fancy was the worst possible: and Roger
rose again, quite sick at heart, pale, worn, and trembling with a
miser's haggard joys. Where should he hide that crock--the epithet
"cursed" crock escaped him this time in his vexed impatience. In the
house and in the garden, it was equally unsafe.

Ha! a bright thought indeed: the hollow in the elm-tree, creaking
overhead, just above the second arm: so the poor, shivering wretch,
almost unclad, swarmed up that slimy elm, and dropped his treasure in
the hollow. Confusion! how deep it was: he never thought of that; here
was indeed something too much of safety: and then those boys of
neighbour Goode's were birds'-nesting continually, specially round the
lake this spring. What an idiot he was not to have remembered this! And
up he climbed again, thrust in his arm to the shoulder, and managed to
repossess himself a fifth time of that blessed crock.

Would that the elm had been hollow to its root, and beneath the root a
chasm bottomless, and that Plutus in that Narbonne jar had served as a
supper to Pluto in the shades! Better had it been for thee, my Roger.

But he had not hid it yet; so, that night--or rather that cold morning
about six, the drenched, half-frozen Fortunatus carried it to bed with
him: and a precious warming-pan it made: for nothing would satisfy the
finder of its presence but perpetual bodily contact:--accordingly, he
placed it in his bosom, and it chilled him to the back-bone.

Yes; that was undoubtedly th