by one the letters that had cost
him so much labour to write and shame to think of, meaning to return the
box to Harriet, after repairing the slight damage he had caused it by
opening it without a key, with a note--the last she would ever receive
from him--telling her triumphantly that in refusing to return what he had
asked for she had calculated too surely upon his submission to her whims.

'But on removing the last letter from the box he received a shock; for
underneath it, at the very bottom, lay money--several golden
guineas--"Doubtless Harriet's pocket-money," he said to himself; though
it was not, but Mrs. Palmley's. Before he had got over his qualms at
this discovery he heard footsteps coming through the house-passage to
where he was. In haste he pushed the box and what was in it under some
brushwood which lay in the linhay; but Jack had been already seen. Two
constables entered the out-house, and seized him as he knelt before the
fireplace, securing the work-box and all it contained at the same moment.
They had come to apprehend him on a charge of breaking into the dwelling-
house of Mrs. Palmley on the night preceding; and almost before the lad
knew what had happened to him they were leading him along the lane that
connects that end of the village with this turnpike-road, and along they
marched him between 'em all the way to Casterbridge jail.

'Jack's act amounted to night burglary--though he had never thought of
it--and burglary was felony, and a capital offence in those days. His
figure had been seen by some one against the bright wall as he came away
from Mrs. Palmley's back window, and the box and money were found in his
possession, while the evidence of the broken bureau-lock and tinkered
window-pane was more than enough for circumstantial detail. Whether his
protestation that he went only for his letters, which he believed to be
wrongfully kept from him, would have availed him anything if supported by
other evidence I do not know; but the one person who could have borne it
out was Harriet, and she acted entirely under the sway of her aunt. That
aunt was deadly towards Jack Winter. Mrs. Palmley's time had come. Here
was her revenge upon the woman who had first won away her lover, and next
ruined and deprived her of her heart's treasure--her little son. When
the assize week drew on, and Jack had to stand his trial, Harriet did not
appear in the case at all, which was allowed to take its course, M