in their learning, that I was amazed at it: they
repeating a whole ode without book out of Horace,
and did give me a very good account of any thing almost,
and did make me very readily very good Latin, and did
give me good account of their Greek grammar, beyond
all possible expectation; and so grave and manly as
I never saw, I confess, nor could have believed; so
that they will be fit to go to Cambridge in two years
at most. They are both little, but very like
one another, and well-looked children. Then in
to my Lady again, and staid till it was almost night
again, and then took leave for a great while again,
but with extraordinary kindness from my Lady, who
looks upon me like one of her own family and interest.
So thence, my wife and people by the highway, and I
walked over the park with Mr. Shepley, and through
the grove, which is mighty pretty, as is imaginable,
and so over their drawbridge to Nun’s Bridge,
and so to my father’s, and there sat and drank,
and talked a little, and then parted. And he
being gone, and what company there was, my father and
I, with a dark lantern; it being now night, into the
garden with my wife, and there went about our great
work to dig up my gold. But, Lord! what a tosse
I was for some time in, that they could not justly
tell where it was; that I begun heartily to sweat,
and be angry, that they should not agree better upon
the place, and at last to fear that it was gone but
by and by poking with a spit, we found it, and then
begun with a spudd to lift up the ground. But,
good God! to see how sillily they did it, not half
a foot under ground, and in the sight of the world
from a hundred places, if any body by accident were
near hand, and within sight of a neighbour’s
window, and their hearing also, being close by:
only my father says that he saw them all gone to church
before he begun the work, when he laid the money,
but that do not excuse it to me. But I was out
of my wits almost, and the more from that, upon my
lifting up the earth with the spudd, I did discern
that I had scattered the pieces of gold round about
the ground among the grass and loose earth; and taking
up the iron head-pieces wherein they were put, I perceive
the earth was got among the gold, and wet, so that
the bags were all rotten, and all the notes, that I
could not tell what in the world to say to it, not
knowing how to judge what was wanting, or what had
been lost by Gibson in his coming down: which,
all put together, did make me mad; and at last was
forced to take up the head-pieces, dirt and all, and
as many of the scattered pieces as I could with the
dirt discern by the candlelight, and carry them up
into my brother’s chamber, and there locke them
up till I had eat a little supper: and then, all
people going to bed, W. Hewer and I did all alone,
with several pails of water and basins, at last wash
the dirt off of the pieces, and parted the pieces and
the dirt, and then begun to tell [them]; and by a note
which I had of the value of the whole in my pocket,