The farmer tapped at his forehead, as a signification to the others that Anthony had gone wrong in the head, which reminded him that he had prophesied as much.  He stiffened out his legs, and gave a manful spring, crying, “Hulloa, brother Tony! why, man, eh?  Look here.  What, goin’ to bed?  What, you, Tony?  I say—­I say—­dear me!” And during these exclamations intricate visions of tripping by means of gold wires danced before him.

Rhoda hurried Anthony out.

After the door had shut, the farmer said:  “That comes of it; sooner or later, there it is!  You give your heart to money—­you insure in a ship, and as much as say, here’s a ship, and, blow and lighten, I defy you.  Whereas we day-by-day people, if it do blow and if it do lighten, and the waves are avilanches, we’ve nothing to lose.  Poor old Tony—­a smash, to a certainty.  There’s been a smash, and he’s gone under the harrow.  Any o’ you here might ha’ heard me say, things can’t last for ever.  Ha’n’t you, now?”

The persons present meekly acquiesced in his prophetic spirit to this extent.  Mrs. Sumfit dolorously said, “Often, William dear,” and accepted the incontestable truth in deep humiliation of mind.

“Save,” the farmer continued, “save and store, only don’t put your heart in the box.”

“It’s true, William;” Mrs. Sumfit acted clerk to the sermon.

Dahlia took her softly by the neck, and kissed her.

“Is it love for the old woman?” Mrs. Sumfit murmured fondly; and Dahlia kissed her again.

The farmer had by this time rounded to the thought of how he personally might be affected by Anthony’s ill-luck, supposing; perchance, that Anthony was suffering from something more than a sentimental attachment to the Bank of his predilection:  and such a reflection instantly diverted his tendency to moralize.

“We shall hear to-morrow,” he observed in conclusion; which, as it caused a desire for the morrow to spring within his bosom, sent his eyes at Master Gammon, who was half an hour behind his time for bed, and had dropped asleep in his chair.  This unusual display of public somnolence on Master Gammon’s part, together with the veteran’s reputation for slowness, made the farmer fret at him as being in some way an obstruction to the lively progress of the hours.

“Hoy, Gammon!” he sang out, awakeningly to ordinary ears; but Master Gammon was not one who took the ordinary plunge into the gulf of sleep, and it was required to shake him and to bellow at him—­to administer at once earthquake and thunder—­before his lizard eyelids would lift over the great, old-world eyes; upon which, like a clayey monster refusing to be informed with heavenly fire, he rolled to the right of his chair and to the left, and pitched forward, and insisted upon being inanimate.  Brought at last to a condition of stale consciousness, he looked at his master long, and uttered surprisingly “Farmer, there’s queer things going on in this house,” and then relapsed to a combat with Mrs. Sumfit, regarding the candle; she saying that it was not to be entrusted to him, and he sullenly contending that it was.