As she withdrew with the watch in her hand, she whispered to Morris:
“Lie still. Don’t be uneasy. I will come again presently.” So, in a few minutes, as seemed to intently listening ears, the house was clear of the intruders. Within a quarter of an hour Margaret had beckoned Morris out of Hester’s room, and had explained the case to her. They went round the house, and found that all the little plate they had was gone, and the cheese from the pantry. Morris’s cloth cloak was left hanging on its pin, and even Edward’s old hat. From these circumstances, and from the dialect of the only speaker, Margaret thought the thieves must be country people from the neighbourhood, who could not wear the old clothes of the gentry without danger of detection. They had come in from the surgery, whose outer door was sufficiently distant from the inhabited rooms of the house to be forced without the noise being heard. Morris and Margaret barricaded this door as well as they could, with such chests and benches as they were able to move without making themselves heard up-stairs: and then Morris, at Margaret’s earnest desire, stole back to bed. Anything rather than alarm Hester.
While they were below, Maria had put on more coals, and restored some order and comfort to the table and the fireside. She concluded that sleep was out of the question for this night. For some moments after Margaret came and sat down by her, neither of them spoke. At length Margaret said, half laughing:
“That you should have come here for rest this night, of all nights in the year!”
“I am glad it happened so. Yes; indeed, I am. I know it must have been a comfort to you to have some one with you, though only poor lame me. And I am glad on my own account too, I assure you. Such a visitation is not half so dreadful as I had fancied—not worth half the fear I have spent upon it all my life. I am sure you felt as I did while he was here; you felt quite yourself, did not you? If it had not been for the woman’s clothes, it would really have been scarcely terrifying at all. There is something much more human about a housebreaker than I had fancied. But yet it was very inhuman of him to take your ring.”
Margaret wept more bitterly than any one had seen her weep since her unhappy days began, and her friend could not comfort her. It was a case in which there was no comfort to be given, unless in the very faint and unreasonable hope that the ring might be offered for sale to some jeweller in some market town in the county; a hope sadly faint and unreasonable; since country people who would take plate and ornaments must, in all probability, be in communication with London rogues, who would turn the property into money in the great city. Still, there was a possibility of recovering the lost treasure; and on this possibility Maria dwelt perseveringly.
“But, Margaret,” she went on to ask, “what is this about your watch? Have you indeed sold it?”
“Yes. Morris managed that for me while Hester was confined. I am glad now that I parted with it as I did. It has paid some bills which I know made Edward anxious; and that is far better than its being in a housebreaker’s hands.”
“Yes, indeed: but I am sorry you all have such a struggle to live. Not a shilling in the house but the one you gave up!”
“So much for Edward’s being out. It happened very well; for he could not have helped us, if he had been here. You saw there were three of them. What I meant was, that Edward has about him the little money that is to last us till Christmas. The rent is safe enough. It is in Mr Grey’s strong box or the bank at Blickley. The rent is too important a matter to be put to any hazard, considering that Mr Rowland is our landlord. It is all ready and safe.”