"No, sir."
"Well, while you two search this chamber, I will examine it myself."
Mr. Jennings apparently entertained a wholesome fear of Acton's powers of wrestling.
Up came Simon in a hurry back again, with a lot of little empty leather bags he had raked out, and—the fragment of a shawl! the edges burnt, it was a corner bit, and marked B.Q.
"What do you call this, sir?" asked the exulting bailiff.
"Curse that Burke!"—thought Roger; but he said nothing.
And the two men up stairs had searched, and pried, and hunted every where in vain; the knotty mattress had been ripped up, the chimney scrutinized, the floor examined, the bed-clothes overhauled, and as for the thatch, if it hadn't been for Roger Acton's constant glance upwards at his treasure in the roof, I am sure they never would have found it. But they did at last: there it was, the crock of gold, full proof of robbery and murder!
"Aha!" said Simon, in a complacent triumph, "Mrs. Quarles's identical honey-pot, full of her clean bright gold, and many pieces still encased in those tidy leather bags;" and his round eyes glistened again; but all at once, with a hurried look over his left shoulder, he exclaimed, involuntarily, in a very different tone, "Ha! away, I say!—" Then he snatched the crock up eagerly, and nursed it like a child.
"Come along with us, Master Acton, you're wanted somewhere else; up, man, look alive, will you?"
And Roger dressed himself mechanically. It was no manner of use, not in the least worth while resisting, innocent though he was; his treasure had been found, and taken from him; he had nothing more to live for; his gold was gone—his god; where was the wisdom of fighting for any thing else; let them take him to prison if they would, to the jail, to the gallows, to any-whither, now his gold was gone. So he put on his clothes without a murmur, and went with them as quiet as a lamb.