d daughter--she rushed to her closet in a torrent of tears.

As for Mary Acton, she was miraculously meek and dumb; all the scold was
quelled within her; the word "blood" was the Petruchio that tamed that
shrew; she could see a plenty of those crimson spots, which might

"The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green, one red,"

dancing in the sun-beams, dotted on the cottage walls, sprinkled as
unholy water, over that foul crock. Would not the money be a curse to
them any how, say nothing of the danger? If things went on as they
began, Mary might indeed have cause for fear: actually, she could not
a-bear to look upon the crock; she quite dreaded it, as if it had
contained a "bottled devil." So there she sat ever so long--silent,
thoughtful, and any thing but comfortable.

What became of Roger until next day at noon, neither he nor I can tell:
true, his carcase lay upon the floor, and the two-gallon jar was empty.
But, for the real man, who could answer to the name of Roger Acton, the
sensitive and conscious soul--that was some where galloping away for
fifteen hours in the Paradise of fools: the Paradise? no--the Maelstrom;
tossed about giddily and painfully in one whirl of tumultuous
drunkenness.

CHAPTER XVI.

HOW THE HOME WAS BLEST THEREBY.

IT will surprise no one to be told that, however truly such an
excess may have been the first, it was by no means the last exploit of
our altered labourer in the same vein of heroism. Bacchus's was quite
close, and he needs must call for his change; he had to call often;
drank all quits; changed another sovereign, and was owed again; but,
trust him, he wasn't going to be cheated out of that: take care of the
pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves. But still it was
ditto repeated; changing, being owed, grudging, grumbling: at last he
found out the famous new plan of owing himself; and as Bacchus's did not
see fit to reject such wealthy customers, Roger soon chalked up a
yard-long score, and grew so niggardly that they could not get a penny
from him.

It is astonishing how immediately wealth brings in, as its companion,
meanness: they walk together, and stand together, and kneel together, as
the hectoring, prodigal Faulconbridge, the Bastard Plantagenet in _King
John_, does with his white-livered, puny brother, Robert. Wherefore, no
sooner was Roger blest with gold, than he resolved not to be such a fool
as to lose liberally, or to give away