The two men carried the box up the hill.  It was in itself a heavy, old-fashioned affair, strengthened and bottomed with iron.  Isaac wondered whether the weight of it were due more to the box or to the money.  But he said nothing.  He had no idea how much John might have saved, and would not have asked him the direct question for the world.  John’s own way of talking about his wealth was curiously contradictory.  His ‘money’ was rarely out of his thoughts or speech, but no one had ever been privileged for many years now to see the inside of his box, except Eliza once; and no one but himself knew the exact amount of the hoard.  It delighted him that the village gossips should double or treble it.  Their estimates only gave him the more ground for vague boasting, and he would not have said a word to put them right.

When they reached the Costrells’ cottage, John’s first care was to examine the cupboard.  He saw that the large wooden chest filled with odds and ends of rubbish which already stood there was placed on the top of his own box.  Then he tried the lock, and pronounced it adequate; he didn’t want to have Flack meddling round.  Now at the moment of parting with his treasure he was seized with a sudden fever of secrecy.  Bessie meanwhile hovered about the two men, full of excitement and loquacity.  And the children, shut into the kitchen, wondered what could be the matter.

When all was done, Isaac locked the cupboard, and solemnly presented the key to John, who added it to the other round his neck.  Then Bessie unlocked the kitchen, and set the children flying, to help her with the supper.  She was in her most bustling and vivacious mood, and she had never cooked the bloaters better or provided a more ample jug of beer.  But John was silent and depressed.

He took leave at last with many sighs and lingerings.  But he had not been gone half an hour, and Bessie and Isaac were just going to bed, when there was a knock at the door, and he reappeared.

‘Let me lie down there,’ he said, pointing to a broken-down old sofa that ran under the window.  ‘I’m lonesome somehow, an I’ve told Louisa.’

His white hair and whiskers stood out wildly round his red face.  He looked old and ill, and the sympathetic Bessie was sorry for him.

She made him a bed on the sofa, and he lay there all night, restless, and sighing heavily.  He missed Eliza more than he had done yet, and was oppressed with a vague sense of unhappiness.  Once, in the middle of the night when all was still, he stole upstairs in his stocking feet and gently tried the cupboard door.  It was quite safe, and he went down contented.

An hour or two later he was off, trudging to Frampton through the August dawn, with his bundle on his back.

SCENE III

Some five months passed away.