es in to see what we should
find. `There's a lump of summat in it, I can feel,' says I, as I was
trying to open the padlock. Well, one key wouldn't do, but another
would, and we opens the bag. `Nothing but bits of paper arter all,'
says one.--`You stop a bit,' says I, and I turns the bag bottom up. Two
things fell out: one were a book, I think, and it must have tumbled
under the table, I fancy, for none on us noticed it; we was all crowding
to see what the other thing was, which were wrapped up in soft paper,
and fell on the table with a hard thump. `Just you open it, Miss
Philips,' says Joe Wright; `it's better for your lovely soft hands to do
it than our rough 'uns.'--`Go along with your nonsense, Joe,' says she;
but she takes up the little parcel and opens it; and what do you think
there were in it, Thomas?" He paused; but Bradly made no answer. "Ah!
You'd never guess. Why, it were a beautiful gold thing full of precious
stones, such as ladies wear round their wrists.

"Well, we all stared at it as if we was stuck. `What's to be done now?'
says I; `this'll be getting us into trouble.'--`Put it back, lock up the
bag, and take it back to where you fetched it from.'--`Nay,' says I,
`that won't pay; they'll lock me up for a thief.'--`Well, what do you
say yourself? I wish we'd never meddled with it, any of us; it'll be
getting us all into a scrape,' says another of my mates.--`Shall we bury
it?' says one.--`Shall we drop it into a pond?' says another.--`Nay,
it's sure to turn up agen us if we do,' says I. So we sat and talked
about it for some time, and had one pint after another, till we was all
pretty fresh. Then says I, all of a sudden, `I'll tell you what we'll
do, if you'll help me, and I'll pay for another pint all round,' (there
was just four of us altogether). `The express train from the north'll
be passing under the wooden bridge in the cutting a little after ten;
let's put the bracelet, as Miss Philips calls it, back into the bag, and
lock it up safe, and then let's take the bag, and one of us clamber down
among the timbers of the bridge, and drop the bag plump on the top of
the train. It don't stop, don't that train, till it gets to London; so
when they finds the bag at the other end, nobody'll know wherever it
came from, 'cos it's got no direction to it, and we shall get fairly
quit of it.'

"It were a wild sort of scheme, and I should never have thought of such
a thing if I hadn't had more ale