"Although I did not forget the marriage, I had other things on my mind, and I gave no thought to it. I had been married a couple of years myself, and, between my trade, and my duties at the church, and shifting to my new house and the birth of a daughter, I had my hands and my head full of my own affairs.
"About six months after the marriage, who must ride up to the door of this very same Beagle but the gentleman who had married the lovely young girl in the church down there. They took his horse round. Those that saw him when he came said he looked excited and wild-like. He ordered them to keep a room for him, and to get him some supper, no matter what; and then he came straight on to me.
"'Goolby,' says he as free as if he had known me all his life, 'I want to have a few words with you in private.'
"It was to the old house he came, and we were just leaving it for good, my wife and myself, taking a last look round to see we had forgotten nothing. I beckoned to my wife to go on, and, shutting the door, I asked him to step back into one of the empty rooms.
"'Goolby,' says he, 'I see you are house-shifting. Five hundred pounds would be very useful to you now.'
"'It would be a small fortune to me at any time, sir,' says I.
"'Goolby,' says he, putting one hand on my shoulder, and putting the other into my pocket, 'I've put five one-hundred-pound Bank of England notes in your pocket now.'
"I felt all of a tremble. I put my hand in my pocket and took out what he had put in. I felt that weak then you could have knocked me down with a little push. The sweat came out on my forehead and my throat felt twisted up. Here was more money than I could hope to lay by in a lifetime in my hand--my own, he said.
"'If you please, sir,' I says, 'I'd rather not take the money. Put it away, sir, and let me go.'
"I felt getting weaker and weaker every minute.