When first he spied the pot, his heart was in his mouth—­it must be gold, and with tottering knees he raised the precious burden.  But, woful disappointment! the word “Honey,” with plenty of French and Fortnum on another pasted label, stared him in the face; it was sweet and slimy too about the neck; there was no sort of jingle when he shook the crock; what though it be heavy?—­honey’s heavy; and it was tied over quite in a common way with pig’s bladder, and his clumsy trembling fingers could not undo that knot; and thus, with a miserable sense of cheated poverty, he threw it down beside the path, and would, perhaps, have flung it right away in sheer disgust, but for the reflection that the little ones might like it.  Once, indeed, the glorious doubt of maybe gold came back upon his mind, and he lifted up the spade to smash the baffling pot, and so make sure of what it might contain;—­make sure, eh? why, you would only lose the honey, whispered domestic economy.  So he left the jar to be opened by his wife when he should go in.

CHAPTER XIV.

JONATHAN’S STORE.

AND where has Mrs. Acton been all this morning?  Off to the Hall, very soon after Grace had got away; and she rung at the side entrance, hard by the kitchen, most fortunately caught Sarah Stack about, and had a good long gossip with her; telling her, open-mouthed, all about Ben Burke having found a shawl of Mrs. Quarles’s on the island; and how, it being very rotten, yes, and smelling foul, Ben had been fool enough to burn it; what a pity! how could the shawl have got there? if it only could ha’ spoken what it knew!  And the bereaved gossips mourned together over secrets undivulged, and their evidence destroyed.  As to the crockery, for a miraculous once in life, Mrs. Acton held her tongue about a thing she knew, and said not a syllable concerning it.  Roger would be mad to lose the money.  Just at parting with her friend Mary Acton was going out by the wrong door, through the hall, but luckily did no more than turn the handle; or she never could have escaped bouncing in upon the lovers’ interview, and thereby occasioning a chaos of confusion.  For, be it whispered, the step-dame was not a little jealous of her ready-made daughter’s beauty, persisted in calling her a child, and treated her any thing but kindly and sisterly, as her full-formed woman’s loveliness might properly have looked for.  Only imagine, if the Hecate had but seen Jonathan’s lit-up looks, or Grace’s down-cast blushes; for it really slipped my observation to record that there were blushes, and probably some cause for them when the keep-sake was given and accepted; only conceive if the step-mother had heard Jonathan’s afterward soliloquy, when he was watching pretty Grace as she tripped away—­and how much he seemed to think of her eyes and eye-lashes!  I am reasonably fearful, had she heard and seen all this—­Poll Acton’s nails might have possibly drawn blood from the cheeks of Jonathan Floyd.  As it was, the little god of love kindly warded from his votaries the coming of so crabbed an antagonist.