“Hey! does Gammon jib?” said the farmer, with the ghost of old laughter twinkling in his eyes.

“He told me this tale,” Mrs. Sumfit continued, daring her irresponsive enemy to contradict her, with a threatening gaze.  “He told me this tale, he did; and my belief’s, his game ’s, he gets me into a corner—­there to be laughed at!  Mas’ Gammon, if you’re not a sly old man, you said, you did, he was drownded; your mother’s brother’s wife’s brother; and he had a brother, and what he was to you—­that brother—­” Mrs. Sumfit smote her hands—­“Oh, my goodness, my poor head! but you shan’t slip away, Mas’ Gammon; no, try you ever so much.  Drownded he was, and eight days in the sea, which you told me over a warm mug of ale by the fire years back.  And I do believe them dumplings makes ye obstinate; for worse you get, and that fond of ’em, I sh’ll soon not have enough in our biggest pot.  Yes, you said he was eight days in the sea, and as for face, you said, poor thing! he was like a rag of towel dipped in starch, was your own words, and all his likeness wiped out; and Joe, the other brother, a cord’er—­bootmaker, you call ’em—­looked down him, as he was stretched out on the shore of the sea, all along, and didn’t know him till he come to the boots, and he says, ‘It’s Abner;’ for there was his boots to know him by.  Now, will you deny, Mas’ Gammon, you said, Mr. Hackbut’s boots, and a long stride it was for ’em from London?  And I won’t be laughed at through arts of any sly old man!”

The circumstantial charge made no impression on Master Gammon, who was heard to mumble, as from the inmost recesses of tight-packed dumpling; but he left the vindication of his case to the farmer’s laughter.  The mention of her uncle had started a growing agitation in Rhoda, to whom the indication of his eccentric behaviour was a stronger confirmation of his visit to the neighbourhood.  And wherefore had he journeyed down?  Had he come to haunt her on account of the money he had poured into her lap?  Rhoda knew in a moment that she was near a great trial of her strength and truth.  She had more than once, I cannot tell you how distantly, conceived that the money had been money upon which the mildest word for “stolen” should be put to express the feeling she had got about it, after she had parted with the bulk of it to the man Sedgett.  Not “stolen,” not “appropriated,” but money that had perhaps been entrusted, and of which Anthony had forgotten the rightful ownership.  This idea of hers had burned with no intolerable fire; but, under a weight of all discountenancing appearances, feeble though it was, it had distressed her.  The dealing with money, and the necessity for it, had given Rhoda a better comprehension of its nature and value.  She had taught herself to think that her suspicion sprang from her uncle’s wild demeanour, and the scene of the gold pieces scattered on the floor, as if a heart had burst at her feet.