Mr. Skinner threw down another four shillings, and said—
"Try again."
Again, the stakes being trebled on a card, he lost—though the winner this time was the third man of the company.
Then a good deal of wrangling and quarrelling in an undertone followed, and Bet, in her room above, was awoke by it. She had been awoke before from the same cause; but to-night she sat up in bed and listened.
The joists that divided the room in this lean-to of Mr. Skinner's cottage, which could hardly be called a "wing," were very thin and far apart, and a knot in one of the boards of her room had been forced out and left a hole through which it was possible to get a peep into the room below.
Presently the voices ceased, and she heard the stealthy footsteps of the men retreating across the yard, and then, as they reached the deep soft sand, they were heard no longer.
Bet got up, and standing on tip-toe tried to look out of the little attic window that lighted her room. As she did so the hole in the floor attracted her, for she could see the light through it from the room below.
She lay down on the boards, and, looking through, could see her uncle at the table.
He had a small box before him, from which he took out some coins, and then he put a key attached to the box in the lock, and fastened it. Bertha watched, she hardly knew why, with deep interest her uncle's proceedings, and saw him rise from the table with the box in his hand and go out.
She climbed on the seat to bring her face on a level with the little window, and distinctly saw her uncle, with a lantern in one hand, which he set down by his side, and in the other a spade, with which he dug a hole in the soft, sandy mould by the strip of garden, where Mrs. Skinner cultivated some straggling cabbages, which went to stalk with but few leaves, in the poor soil of the little enclosure.