but himself and a young
girl, and the old fellow slipped out of his bed and went out of the
door as far as a little bush and some stones. The young girl kept
her eye on him, and she made sure he'd hidden something in the bush;
so when he was back in his bed she called the people, and they all
came and looked in the bushes, but not a thing could they find. The
old man died after, and no one ever found his fortune to this day.'

'There were some young lads a while since,' said the old woman, 'and
they went up of a Sunday and began searching through those bushes to
see if they could find anything, but a kind of a turkey-cock came up
out of the stones and drove them away.'

'There was another old woman,' said the man of the house, 'who tried
to take down her fortune into her stomach. She was near death, and
she was all day stretched in her bed at the corner of the fire. One
day when the girl was tinkering about, the old woman rose up and got
ready a little skillet that was near the hob and put something into
it and put it down by the fire, and the girl watching her all the
time under her oxter, not letting on she seen her at all. When the
old woman lay down again the girl went over to put on more sods on
the fire, and she got a look into the skillet, and what did she see
but sixty sovereigns. She knew well what the old woman was striving
to do, so she went out to the dairy and she got a lump of fresh
butter and put it down into the skillet, when the woman didn't see
her do it at all. After a bit the old woman rose up and looked into
the skillet, and when she saw the froth of the butter she thought it
was the gold that was melted. She got back into her bed--a dark
place, maybe--and she began sipping and sipping the butter till she
had the whole of it swallowed. Then the girl made some trick to
entice the skillet away from her, and she found the sixty sovereigns
in the bottom and she kept them for herself.'

By this time it was late, and the old woman brought over a mug of
milk and a piece of bread to Darby at the settle, and the people
gathered at their table for their supper; so I went into the little
room at the end of the cottage where I am given a bed.

When I came into the kitchen in the morning, old Darby was still
asleep on the settle, with his coat and trousers over him, a red
night-cap on his head, and his half-bred terrier, Jess, chained with
a chain he carries with him to the leg of the settle.

'That's a p