CHAPTER XXI.

THE CAPTURE.

HE had not long to wonder.  Jennings got up instantly, despite of bruises, posted to the Hall, took a search-warrant from Sir John’s study, (they were always ready signed, and Jennings filled one up,) and returned with a brace of constables to search the cottage.

Then Roger, as he lay musing, fancied he heard men’s voices below, and his wife, who had just come in, talking to them; what could they want? tramps, perhaps:  or Ben? he shuddered at the possibility; with Tom too; and he felt ashamed to meet his son.  So he turned his face to the wall, and lay musing on—­he hadn’t been drinking too much over-night—­Oh, no! it was sickness, and rheumatics, and care about the crock; Tom should be told that he was very ill, poor father!  Just as he had planned this, and resolved to keep his secret from that poaching ruffian Burke, some one came creeping up the stairs, slided in at the door, and said to him in a deep whisper from the further end of the room,

“Acton, give me the gold, and the men shall go away; it is not yet too late; tell me where to find the crock of gold.”

An oath was the reply; and, at a sign from Jennings, up came the other two.

“We have searched every where, Mr. Simon Jennings, both cot and garden; ground disturbed in two or three places, but nothing under it; in-doors too, the floor is broken by the hearth and by the dresser, but no signs of any thing there:  now, Master Acton, tell us where it is, man, and save us all the trouble.”

Roger’s newly-learnt vocabulary of oaths was drawn upon again.

“Did you look in the ash-pit?” asked Jennings.

“No, sir.”

“Well, while you two search this chamber, I will examine it myself.”

Mr. Jennings apparently entertained a wholesome fear of Acton’s powers of wrestling.

Up came Simon in a hurry back again, with a lot of little empty leather bags he had raked out, and—­the fragment of a shawl! the edges burnt, it was a corner bit, and marked B.Q.

“What do you call this, sir?” asked the exulting bailiff.

“Curse that Burke!”—­thought Roger; but he said nothing.

And the two men up stairs had searched, and pried, and hunted every where in vain; the knotty mattress had been ripped up, the chimney scrutinized, the floor examined, the bed-clothes overhauled, and as for the thatch, if it hadn’t been for Roger Acton’s constant glance upwards at his treasure in the roof, I am sure they never would have found it.  But they did at last:  there it was, the crock of gold, full proof of robbery and murder!

“Aha!” said Simon, in a complacent triumph, “Mrs. Quarles’s identical honey-pot, full of her clean bright gold, and many pieces still encased in those tidy leather bags;” and his round eyes glistened again; but all at once, with a hurried look over his left shoulder, he exclaimed, involuntarily, in a very different tone, “Ha! away, I say!—­” Then he snatched the crock up eagerly, and nursed it like a child.