w pretends to love her. I think I dream. How could she ever
have looked happily on that hateful face?"

"He would be thought handsome," said Robert, marvelling how it was that
Rhoda could have looked on Sedgett for an instant without reading his
villanous nature. "I don't wish you to regret anything you have done or
you may do, Rhoda. But this is what made me cry out when I looked on that
man, and knew it was he who had come to be Dahlia's husband. He'll be
torture to her. The man's temper, his habits--but you may well say you
are ignorant of us men. Keep so. What I do with all my soul entreat of
you is--to get a hiding-place for your sister. Never let him take her
off. There's such a thing as hell upon earth. If she goes away with him
she'll know it. His black temper won't last. He will come for her, and
claim her."

"He shall have money." Rhoda said no more.

On a side-table in the room stood a remarkable pile, under cover of a
shawl. Robert lifted the shawl, and beheld the wooden boxes, one upon the
other, containing Master Gammon's and Mrs. Sumfit's rival savings, which
they had presented to Dahlia, in the belief that her husband was under a
cloud of monetary misfortune that had kept her proud heart from her old
friends. The farmer had brought the boxes and left them there, forgetting
them.

"I fancy," said Robert, "we might open these."

"It may be a little help," said Rhoda.

"A very little," Robert thought; but, to relieve the oppression of the
subject they had been discussing, he forthwith set about procuring tools,
with which he split first the box which proved to be Mrs. Sumfit's, for
it contained, amid six gold sovereigns and much silver and pence, a slip
of paper, whereon was inscribed, in a handwriting identified by Rhoda as
peculiar to the loving woman,--

"And sweetest love to her ever dear."

Altogether the sum amounted to nine pounds, three shillings, and a
farthing.

"Now for Master Gammon--he's heavy," said Robert; and he made the savings
of that unpretentious veteran bare. Master Gammon had likewise written
his word. It was discovered on the blank space of a bit of newspaper, and
looked much as if a fat lobworm had plunged himself into a bowl of ink,
and in his literary delirium had twisted uneasily to the verge of the
paper. With difficulty they deciphered,--

"Complemens."

Robert sang, "Bravo, Gammon!" and counted the hoard. All was in copper
coinage, Lycurgan and seve