'Yes!'
'What be they put there for?'
'They are stepping-stones to help to mount into the saddle.'
'What stones be they?'
'I'm sure I can't say,'
'Right; no more does he know or care who uses them. Well, I'm naught, but I can help you into the saddle of Coombe Park.'
CHAPTER XVIII.
TREASURE TROVE.
Charles Luxmore was not able to sleep much that night. It was not that his conscience troubled him. He gave hardly a thought to the affair at the circus. His imagination was excited; that delusive faculty, which, according to Paley, is the parent of so much error and evil. The idea of Coombe Park recurred incessantly to his mind and kept him awake. But it was not the acquisition of wealth and position that made the prospect so alluring; it was the hope of crowing over all those who had despised him, of exciting the envy of those who now looked down on him.
The 'Ring of Bells' was on the Coombe estate. How he could swagger there as the landlord's overlord! The Nanspians, Taverner Langford, had but a few hundred acres, and the Coombe Park property was nigh on two thousand.