Simon was resolved upon the spoil, come what might; although his waking sensations of buoyancy, his noon-day cogitations of a calmer kind, and his even-tide determined scheming, had now given way to a nervous and unpleasant trepidation.  So he poured spirits down to keep his spirits up.  Very early after dark, he had watched his opportunity while Mrs. Quarles was scolding in the kitchen, had slipped shoeless and unperceived, from his pantry into the housekeeper’s room, and locked himself securely in the shower bath.  Hapless wight! it was very little after six yet, and there he must stand till twelve or so:  his foresight had not calculated this, and the devil had already begun to cheat him.  But he would go through with it now; no flinching, though his rabbit back is breaking with fatigue, and his knocked knees totter with exhaustion, and his haggard eyes swim dizzily, and his bad heart is failing him for fear.

Yes, fear, and with good reason too for fear; “nothing easier, nothing safer,” said his black adviser; how easily for bodily pains, how safely for chances of detection, was he getting at the promised crock of gold!

“Mr. Jennings!  Mr. Simon! where in the world was Mr. Jennings?” nobody knew; he must have gone out somewhere.  Strange, too—­and left his hat and great-coat.

Here’s a general for an ambuscade; Oh, Simon, Simon! you have had the whole day to think of it—­how is it that both you and your dark friend overlooked in your calculations the certainty of search, and the chance of a discovery?  The veriest school-boy, when he hid himself, would hide his hat.  I am half afraid that you are in that demented state, which befits the wretch ordained to perish.

But where is Mr. Jennings? that was the continued cry for four agonizing hours of dread and difficulty.  Sarah, the still-room maid, was sitting at her work, unluckily in Mrs. Quarles’s room; she had come in shortly after Simon’s secret entry; there she sat, and he dared not stir.  And they looked every where—­except in the right place; to do the devil justice, it was a capital hiding-corner that; rooms, closets, passages, cellars, out-houses, gardens, lofts, tenements, and all the “general words,” in a voluminous conveyance, were searched and searched in vain; more than one groom expected (hoped is a truer word) to find Mr. Jennings hanging by a halter from the stable-lamp; more than one exhilarated labourer, hastily summoned for the search, was sounding the waters with a rake and rope, in no slight excitement at the thought of fishing up a deceased bailiff.

It was a terrible time for the ensconced one:  sometimes he thought of coming out, and treating the affair as a bit of pleasantry:  but then the devil had taken off his shoes—­as a Glascow captain deals with his cargo of refractory Irishers; how could he explain that? his abominable old aunt was shrewd, and he knew how clearly she would guess at the truth; if he desired to make sure of losing every chance, he could come out now, and reveal himself; but if he nourished still the hope of counting out that crock of gold, he’ll bide where he is, and trust to—­to—­to fate.  The wretch had “Providence” on his blistered tongue.