The Devil must have been eager and active that night, for the key turned in the lock with a smoothness that made honesty impossible, almost foolish.  And the old, weak lock on the box itself—­why, a chisel had soon made an end of that!  Only five minutes—­it had been so quick—­there had been no trouble.  God had made no sign at all.

Since!  All the village smiles—­the village flatteries recovered—­an orgy of power and pleasure—­new passions and excitements—­above all, the rising passion of drink, sweeping in storms through a weak nature that alternately opened to them and shuddered at them.  And through everything the steadily dribbling away of the hoard—­the astonishing ease and rapidity with which the coins—­gold or silver—­had flowed through her hands!  How could one spend so much in meat and dress, in beer and gin, in giving other people beer and gin?  How was it possible?  She sat lost in miserable thoughts, a mist round her....

‘Wal I niver!’ said a low, astonished voice at the foot of the stairs.

Bessie rose to her feet with a shriek, the heart stopping in her breast.  The door below was ajar, and through the opening peered a face—­the vicious, drunken face of her husband’s eldest son, Timothy Costrell.  The man below cast one more look of amazement at the woman standing on the top stair, at the candle behind her, at the open box.  Then an idea struck him:  he sprang up the stairs at a bound.

‘By gosh!’ he said, looking down at the gold and silver. ‘By gosh!’

Bessie tried to thrust him back.

‘What are you here for?’ she asked fiercely, her trembling lips the colour of the whitewashed wall behind.  ’You get off at onst, or I’ll call yer father.’

He pushed her contemptuously aside.  The swish of her dress caught the candle, and by good fortune put it out, or she would have been in a blaze.  Now there was only the light from the paraffin lamp in the kitchen below striking upwards through the open door.  She fell against the doorway of her bedroom, panting and breathless, watching him.

He seated himself in her place, and stooped to look at the box.  On the inside of the lid was pasted a discoloured piece of paper, and on the paper was written, in a round, laborious hand, the name, ’John Bolderfield.’

‘My blazes!’ he said, slowly, his bloodshot eyes opening wider than ever.  ‘It’s old John’s money.  So yo’ve been after it, eh?’

He turned to her with a grin, one hand on the box.  He had been tramping for more than three months, during which time they had heard nothing of him.  His filthy clothes scarcely hung together.  His cheeks were hollow and wolfish.  From the whole man there rose a sort of exhalation of sodden vice.  Bessie had seen him drunken and out at elbows before, but never so much of the beast as this.

However, by this time she had somewhat recovered herself, and, approaching him, she stooped and tried to shut the box.