generally somewhat stupefied on rising by the drink he had taken the
night before, and by the congested brain which the heaviness of such
sleep produced, he could not at first believe that Cutts had altogether
abandoned the enterprise--rather thought that, with his habitual
wariness, that Ulysses of the Profession had gone forth to collect
further information in the neighbourhood of the proposed scene of
action. He was not fully undeceived in this belief till somewhat late
in the day, when, strolling into the stable-yard, the ostler, concluding
from the gentleman's goodly thews and size that he was a north-country
grazier, delivered Cutts's allegorical caution against the bullocks.

Thus abandoned, Jasper's desperate project only acquired a still more
concentrated purpose and a ruder simplicity of action. His original
idea, on first conceiving the plan of robbery, had been to enter into
Darrell's presence disguised and masked. Even, however, before Cutts
deserted him; the mere hope of plunder had become subordinate to
the desire of a personal triumph; and now that Cutts had left him to
himself, and carried away the means of disguise, Jasper felt rather
pleased than otherwise at the thought that his design should have none
of the characteristics of a vulgar burglary. No mask now; his front
should be as open as his demand. Cutts's report of the facility of
penetrating into Darrell's very room also lessened the uses of an
accomplice. And in the remodification of his first hasty plan of common
place midnight stealthy robbery, he would no longer even require an
assistant to dispose of the plunder he might gain.

Darrell should now yield to his exactions, as a garrison surprised
accepts the terms of its conqueror. There would be no flight, no hiding,
no fear of notes stopped at banks. He would march out, hand on haunch,
with those immunities of booty that belong to the honours of war.
Pleasing his self-conceit with so gallant a view of his meditated
exploit, Jasper sauntered at dark into the town, bought a few long
narrow nails and a small hammer, and returning to his room, by the aid
of the fire, the tongs, and the hammer, he fashioned these nails,
with an ease and quickness which showed an expert practitioner, into
instruments that would readily move the wards of any common country-made
lock. He did not care for weapons. He trusted at need to his own
powerful hands. It was no longer, too, the affair of a robber unknown,