After turning about the watch, and examining it on every side, he wrapped it up again, and restored it to its hiding-place.
“She must ha’ stole it,” he said to himself, as he threw in the earth again. “Certain sure, she must ha’ stole it. A poor maid like her doesn’t ha’ gold watches to throw about. If it was given to her she wouldn’t go and bury it in a field half a mile away from her home. No, ’tisn’t very likely. She stole it. That’s what she’s done, and she’ve a-hid it away here to keep it safe till she can pop it, or maybe sell it. Nobody ’ud ha’ knowed if I hadn’t chanced to look over the hurdle. It do really seem quite providential,” continued Timothy, who loved to use a long word, now and then, even in communion with himself, “to think I should ha’ falled asleep, and my lantern should ha’ went out like that, else the maid ’ud never ha’ dug so nigh to where I was sittin’.”
He rose to his feet now, stamping down the earth over the filled-in hole, and then loosening the surface with the toe of his big boot; as he turned away he laughed to himself.
“The maid little thinks as I do know her secret. I’ll watch—ah, sure, I’ll watch. I’m not wishful for to get her into trouble, but I’ll watch. When she comes to dig her treasure up again, I’ll ha’ summat for to say to her.”
With this resolution he made his way back to his charges; but throughout his oft broken slumbers that night he was haunted by the remembrance of Ann-Car’line’s secret; when he was not in fancy holding the watch in his hand or replacing it in its wrapper, he was sternly questioning the girl and receiving numerous and widely differing explanations of the mystery.
When he went about his work at early dawn he frequently glanced in the direction of the hiding place, and saw in imagination the little round packet lying snug at the bottom of its hole. A chance passer-by on the rough track on the other side of the hedge made him start—would he be likely to detect that the earth had been recently disturbed in that particular spot which Timothy knew of? Even when Mr Hounsell came up as usual to inspect the little flock, Timothy was careful to place himself immediately in front of him, whenever the farmer chanced to glance in the direction in question; so that his own burly form might serve as a screen to Ann-Car’line’s indiscretion.
“What be you a-turnin’ and a-turnin’ round me like that for?” enquired his master presently, with some sternness. “There you do make I quite giddy. You be jist same as a weathercock.”
Timothy had no answer ready on the moment; he looked up at the sky, and then at the distant horizon, and finally remarked that he didn’t think the wind was shiftin’ that much.
“I don’t say it be,” responded the farmer emphatically, “but I do say as you mid be a weathercock the way you do go on a-twistin’ and a-turnin’—there ye be again! What be the matter, man?”
Timothy set his hat more firmly on his head, cleared his throat, spat in his hands, and caught up a pitchfork, remarking that there was a deal to be seen to, and that weathercock or no weathercock, he ought to be shakin’ out the straw.