The old man stared anew at her fingers.
"I minds where I saw that hand," he said, "it was outside a white winding sheet ... long ago."
Lucy tried to draw him into the kitchen, but he was obstinate, and afraid of Mistress Lynn.
"I'll go and feed the chickens," he mumbled, and shuffled away round the end of the house.
Lucy looked after him sadly, then returned to her work. As she was shaking the sheepskin rug a coin fell out of it and lay glittering upon the ground. Picking it up with an exclamation of surprise, she turned it over and over. It was a sovereign. For some minutes she stood with her brows knit and her blue eyes darkening as thought took shape. The coin was her great-grandmother's, there could be no doubt of it. Lucy had always had suspicions about the locked cupboard of the bridewain, which she had never seen opened. Now she knew something was hidden there—money most likely, perhaps many more coins like the one she had found, perhaps bags of them. If one could be lost without a hue and cry being raised for it, they must be as plentiful as blackberries.
What should she do? Should she keep it? Was it not her due, considering the way she worked and yet received no recompense? The temptation to put the coin in her pocket was strong, and she thought longingly of the many pretty things it would buy. Then she spurned the suggestion. She remembered Jan Straw, whose life had been bought for a few pounds and a sup of porridge; she saw Barbara wearing out her strong young life upon the fells; she thought of herself, drudging from daylight to day-darkening. The bitterness of it set her teeth on edge. She looked again at the yellow coin, and it seemed to have taken upon it a tinge of blood.
Then the curtain rings of the bed jingled, and turning round, she saw that her great-grandmother was sitting up, looking at her.
Lucy might fear the old woman, but she was not lacking in courage when the moment called for it. She balanced the coin upon her thumb-nail, spun it into the air, and caught it as it fell.
"See what I've found," she said.
Mistress Lynn stared at the shining thing, lying on the girl's palm.