“Certainly, Mr Nanjivell.  One-an’-three.  Shall I send it for ’ee?  No?—­an’ nothing further to-day?  Then one-an’-three and one is two-an’-three, an’ two two’s four, two-an’-seven, screws and staples two two’s, two-an’-eleven.  If you ask my opinion we’re in for settled weather.”

Nicky-Nan’s business had taken time—­some twenty minutes in excess of his calculations, as a glance at the sky informed him. (He carried no watch.) He hurried home in a twitter of nervousness, which increased as he drew near to his front door.  In the passage he stumbled against a pail of water, all but upsetting it, and swore under his breath at his evil luck, which had deferred Mrs Penhaligon’s weekly scrubbing to Tuesday (Bank Holiday being a dies non).

On entering the parlour he drew a breath of relief.  No one had visited it, to disturb it.  The threadbare tablecloth rested as he had spread it, covering the piles of gold; the tattered scrap of carpet, too, hiding (so far as it might) the scree of fallen rubbish.

On this rubbish, after assuring himself that his treasure was safe, he fell to work with the sieve; making as little noise as might be, because by this time Mrs Penhaligon had begun operations on the brick flooring of the passage.  Mrs Penhaligon’s father had been a groom in Squire Tresawna’s service, and she had a trick of hissing softly while she scrubbed, as grooms do in washing-down and curry combing their horses.  He could hear the sound whenever her brush intromitted its harsh whoosh-whoosh and she paused to apply fresh soap.  So they worked, the man and the woman—­both kneeling—­with the thin door between.

Nicky-Nan felt no weariness as yet.  He used his coal-scraper to fill the sieve, and shook the fine powdery lime into one heap, and gently tilted the coarse residuum upon another, after searching it carefully over.  At the end of an hour’s labour he had added two guinea-pieces and nine sovereigns to his collection.

He vaguely remembered having been told—­long ago by somebody—­that sovereigns had first come into use back in the last century, not long after the battle of Waterloo; that in more ancient times gold had been paid in guineas; that guineas were then worth much more than their face value, because of the great amount of paper money; that Jews went about buying them up for twenty-three or twenty-four shillings; that, over at Troy, a Jew had been murdered and robbed of a lot of these coins by the landlord of a public-house.

He reasoned from this—­and rightly, no doubt—­that the Old Doctor had started his hoard in early life, when Boney was threatening to invade us; and had kept up the habit in later and more prosperous years, long after the currency had been changed.  That would account for the sovereigns being so many and the guineas by comparison so few.

He was aching sorely in back and reins:  his leg, too, wanted ease. . . .  He would take a rest and spend it in examining the window, by which alone he could get rid of the rubbish without courting inquiry.  It was his only postern gate.