For immediate safety—­the evening after his memorable first fifteen hours of joy—­he buried the crock deeply in a hole in his garden, filling all up hard with stones and brick-bats; and when he had smoothed it straight and workmanlike, remembered that he surely hadn’t kept out enough to last him; so up it had to come again—­five more taken out, and the crock was restored to its unquiet grave.

Scarcely had he done this, than it became dark, and he began to fancy some one might have seen him hide it; those low mean tramps (never before had he refused the wretched wayfarers his sympathy) were always sneaking about, and would come and dig it up in the night:  so he went out in the dark and the rain, got at it with infinite trouble and a broken pickaxe, and exultingly brought the crock in-doors; where he buried it a third time, more securely, underneath the grouted floor, close beside the fire in the chimney-corner:  it was now nearly midnight, and he went to bed.

Hardly had he tumbled in, after pulling on a nightcap of the flagon, than the dread idea overtook him that his treasure might be melted!  Was there ever such a fool as he?  Well, well, to think he could fling his purse on the fire!  What a horrid thought!  Metallurgy was a science quite unknown to Roger; he only considered gold as heavy as lead, and therefore probably as fusible:  so down he bustled, made another hole, a deeper one too this time, in the floor under the dresser, where, exhausted with his toil and care, he deposited the crock by four in the morning—­and so retired once more.

All in vain—­nobody ever knew when Black Burke might be returning from his sporting expeditions—­and that beast of a lurcher would be sure to be creeping in this morning, and would scratch it up, and his brute of a master would get it all!  This fancy was the worst possible:  and Roger rose again, quite sick at heart, pale, worn, and trembling with a miser’s haggard joys.  Where should he hide that crock—­the epithet “cursed” crock escaped him this time in his vexed impatience.  In the house and in the garden, it was equally unsafe.

Ha! a bright thought indeed:  the hollow in the elm-tree, creaking overhead, just above the second arm:  so the poor, shivering wretch, almost unclad, swarmed up that slimy elm, and dropped his treasure in the hollow.  Confusion! how deep it was:  he never thought of that; here was indeed something too much of safety:  and then those boys of neighbour Goode’s were birds’-nesting continually, specially round the lake this spring.  What an idiot he was not to have remembered this!  And up he climbed again, thrust in his arm to the shoulder, and managed to repossess himself a fifth time of that blessed crock.

Would that the elm had been hollow to its root, and beneath the root a chasm bottomless, and that Plutus in that Narbonne jar had served as a supper to Pluto in the shades!  Better had it been for thee, my Roger.