Irishman’s illimitable rope, with the end cut off.  So while Roger was brewing up vast schemes of nascent wealth, and prosperous days at last, the filched sovereign, attracted by centripetal gravity, had found a passage downwards, and had straightway rolled into a crevice of mother-earth, long before its “brief lord” had commenced his day’s labour.  Yes, it had been lost a good hour ere he found it out, for he had fancied that he had felt it there, and often did he feel, but his fancy was a button; and when he made the dread discovery, what a sting of momentary anguish, what a sickening fear, what an eager search! and, as the grim truth became more evident, that, indeed, beyond all remedy, his new-got, ill-got, egg of coming wealth was all clean gone—­oh! this was worm-wood, this was bitter as gall, and the strong man well-nigh fainted.  It was something sad to have done the ill—­but misery to have done it all for nothing:  the sin was not altogether pleasant to his taste, but it was aloe itself to lose the reward.  And when, pale and sick, leaning on his spade, he came to his old strength again, what was the reaction?  Compunction at incipient crime, and gratitude to find its punishment so mercifully speedy, so lenient, so discriminative?  I fear that if ever he had these thoughts at all, he chased them wilfully away:  his disappointment, far from being softened into patience, was sharpened to a feeling of revenge at fate; and all his hope now was—­such another chance, gold, more gold, never mind how; more gold, he burnt for gold, he lusted after gold!

We must leave him for a time to his toil and his reflections, and touch another topic of our theme.

CHAPTER V.

The inquest.

Just a week before the baronet came of age, and a fortnight from the present time, an awful and mysterious event had happened at the Hall:  the old house-keeper, Mrs. Quarles, had been found dead in her bed, under circumstances, to say the very least, of a black and suspicious appearance.  The county coroner had got a jury of the neighbours impanelled together; who, after sitting patiently on the inquest, and hearing, as well as seeing, the following evidence, could arrive at no verdict more specific than the obvious fact, that the poor old creature had been “found dead.”  The great question lay between apoplexy and murder; and the evidence tended to a well-matched conflict of opinions.

First, there lay the body, quietly in bed, tucked in tidily and undisturbed, with no marks of struggling, none whatever—­the clothes lay smooth, and the chamber orderly:  yet the corpse’s face was of a purple hue, the tongue swollen, the eyes starting from their sockets:  it might, indeed, possibly have been an apoplectic seizure, which took her in her sleep, and killed her as she lay; but that the gripe of clutching fingers had left their livid seals upon the throat, and countenanced the dreadful thought of strangulation!