old, and the lonesomeness of a man without chick or child. He
would have felt unutterably forlorn and miserable, he would have shrunk
trembling from the shapes of death and pain that seemed to fill the
darkness, but for this fact, this defence, this treasure, that set him
apart from his fellows and gave him this proud sense of superiority, of
a good time coming in spite of all. Instinctively, as he sat on the
bed, he pushed his bare foot backwards till his heel touched a wooden
object that stood underneath. The contact cheered him at once. He
ceased to think about Eliza, his head was once more full of whirling
plans and schemes.

The wooden object was a box that held his money, the savings of a
labourer's lifetime. Seventy-one pounds! It seemed to him an ocean of
gold, never to be exhausted. The long toil of saving it was almost
done. After the Frampton job, he would begin enjoying it, cautiously
at first, taking a bit of work now and again, and then a bit of holiday.

All the savour of life was connected for him with that box. His mind
ran over the constant excitements of the many small loans he had made
from it to his relations and friends. A shilling in the pound
interest--he had never taken less and he had never asked more. He had
only lent to people he knew well, people in the village whom he could
look after, and seldom for a term longer than three months, for to be
parted from his money at all gave him physical pain. He had once
suffered great anxiety over a loan to his eldest brother of thirty
pounds. But in the end James had paid it all back. He could still
feel tingling through him the passionate joy with which he had counted
out the recovered sovereigns, with the extra three half-sovereigns of
interest.

Muster Drew indeed! John fell into an angry inward argument against
his suggestion of the savings bank. It was an argument he had often
rehearsed, often declaimed, and at bottom it all came to this--without
that box under his bed, his life would have sunk to dulness and
decrepitude; he would have been merely a pitiful and lonely old man.
He had neither wife nor children, all for the hoard's sake; but while
the hoard was there, to be handled any hour, he regretted nothing.
Besides, there was the peasant's rooted distrust of offices, and paper
transactions, of any routine that checks his free will and frightens
his inexperience. He was still eagerly thinking when the light began
to flood int