’"We’ll do that,” said the daughter, and with that they all stretched out for the night.

’The next evening they went down quietly with a shovel and they dug up the coffin, and combed through her hair, and there behind her poll they found her fortune, five hundred pounds, in good notes and gold.’

’There was an old fellow living on the little hill beyond the graveyard,’ said Danny-boy, when the man had finished, ’and he had his fortune some place hid in his bed, and he was an old weak fellow, so that they were all watching him to see he wouldn’t hide it away.  One time there was no one in it but himself and a young girl, and the old fellow slipped out of his bed and went out of the door as far as a little bush and some stones.  The young girl kept her eye on him, and she made sure he’d hidden something in the bush; so when he was back in his bed she called the people, and they all came and looked in the bushes, but not a thing could they find.  The old man died after, and no one ever found his fortune to this day.’

‘There were some young lads a while since,’ said the old woman, ’and they went up of a Sunday and began searching through those bushes to see if they could find anything, but a kind of a turkey-cock came up out of the stones and drove them away.’

‘There was another old woman,’ said the man of the house, ’who tried to take down her fortune into her stomach.  She was near death, and she was all day stretched in her bed at the corner of the fire.  One day when the girl was tinkering about, the old woman rose up and got ready a little skillet that was near the hob and put something into it and put it down by the fire, and the girl watching her all the time under her oxter, not letting on she seen her at all.  When the old woman lay down again the girl went over to put on more sods on the fire, and she got a look into the skillet, and what did she see but sixty sovereigns.  She knew well what the old woman was striving to do, so she went out to the dairy and she got a lump of fresh butter and put it down into the skillet, when the woman didn’t see her do it at all.  After a bit the old woman rose up and looked into the skillet, and when she saw the froth of the butter she thought it was the gold that was melted.  She got back into her bed—­a dark place, maybe—­and she began sipping and sipping the butter till she had the whole of it swallowed.  Then the girl made some trick to entice the skillet away from her, and she found the sixty sovereigns in the bottom and she kept them for herself.’

By this time it was late, and the old woman brought over a mug of milk and a piece of bread to Darby at the settle, and the people gathered at their table for their supper; so I went into the little room at the end of the cottage where I am given a bed.

When I came into the kitchen in the morning, old Darby was still asleep on the settle, with his coat and trousers over him, a red night-cap on his head, and his half-bred terrier, Jess, chained with a chain he carries with him to the leg of the settle.