a slimy mesh like birdlime:  no wonder my eye was a leetle blackish, when half-a-dozen earthern crocks were broken against it.  I was angered enough, I tell you, to think any man could be such a fool as to bring honey there to eat or to hide—­when at once I spied summut red among the mess; and what should it be but a pretty little China house, red-brick-like, with a split in the roof for droppings, and ticketed ‘Savings-bank:’  the chink o’ that bank you hears now:  and the bank itself is in the pond, now I’ve cleaned the till out.”

“Wonderful sure!  But what did you do with the honey, Ben?—­some of the pots wasn’t broke,” urged notable Mrs. Acton.

“Oh, burn the slimy stuff, I warn’t going to put my mouth out o’ taste o’ bacca, for a whole jawful of tooth-aches:  I’ll tell you, dame, what I did with them ere crocks, wholes, and parts.  There’s never a stone on Pike Island, it’s too swampy, and I’d forgot to bring my pocketful, as usual.  The heaviest fish, look you, always lie among the sedge, hereabouts and thereabouts, and needs stirring, as your Tom knows well; so I chucked the gallipots fur from me, right and left, into the shallows, and thereby druv the pike upon my hooks.  A good night’s work I made of it too, say nothing of the Savings-bank; forty pound o’ pike and twelve of eel warn’t bad pickings.”

“Dear, it was a pity though to fling away the honey; but what became of the shawl, Ben?” Perhaps Mrs. Acton thought of looking for it.

“Oh, as for that, I was minded to have sunk it, with its mess of sweet-meats and potsherds; but a thought took me, dame, to be ’conomical for once:  and I was half sorry too that I’d flung away the jars, for I began to fancy your little uns might ha’ liked the stuff; so I dipped the clout like any washerwoman, rinshed, and squeezed, and washed the mess away, and have worn it round my waist ever since; here, dame, I haven’t been this way for a while afore to-night; but I meant to ask you if you’d like to have it; may be ’tan’t the fashion though.”

“Good gracious, Ben! why that’s Mrs. Quarles’s shawl, I’d swear to it among a hundred; Sarah Stack, at the Hall, once took and wore it, when Mrs. Quarles was ill a-bed, and she and our Thomas walked to church together.  Yes—­green, edged with red, and—­I thought so—­a yellow circle in the middle; here’s B.Q., for Bridget Quarles, in black cotton at the corner.  Lackapity! if they’d heard of all this at the Inquest!  I tell you what, Big Ben, it’s kindly meant of you, and so thank you heartily, but that shawl would bring us into trouble; so please take it yourself to the Hall, and tell ’em fairly how you came by it.”

“I don’t know about that Poll Acton; perhaps they might ask me for the Saving-bank, too—­eh, Roger!”

“No, no, wife; no, it’ll never do to lose the money! let a bygone be a bygone, and don’t disturb the old woman in her grave.  As to the shawl, if it’s like to be a tell-tale, in my mind, this hearth’s the safest place for it.”