h of her affections.

CHAPTER XVII.

CARE.

But other happy consequences soon became apparent. If Acton in
his tipsy state was mad, in his intervals of soberness he was thoroughly
miserable. And this, not merely on the score of sickness, exhaustion,
prostrated spirits, blue-devils, or other the long catalogue of a
drunkard's joys; not merely from a raging wife, and a wretched home; not
merely from the stings, however sharp, however barbed, of a conscience
ill at ease, that would rise up fiercely like a hissing snake, and
strike the black apostate to the earth: these all, doubtless, had their
pleasant influences, adding to the lucky finder's bliss: but there was
another root of misery most unlooked for, and to the poor who dream of
gold, entirely paradoxical.

The possession of that crock was the heaviest of cares. Where on earth
was he to hide it? how to keep it safely, secretly? What if he were
robbed of it in some sly way! O, thought of utter wo! it made the
fortunate possessor quiver like an aspen. Or what, if some one or more
of those blustering boon companions were to come by night with a
bludgeon and a knife, and--and cut his throat, and find the treasure?
or, worse still, were to torture him, set him on the fire like a
saucepan (he had heard of Turpin having done so with a rich old woman),
and make him tell them "where" in his extremity of pains, and give up
all, and then--and then murder him at last, outright, and afterwards
burn the hovel over his head, babes and all, that none might live to
tell the tale? These fears set him on the rack, and furnished one
inciting cause to that uninterrupted orgie; he must be either mad or
miserable, this lucky finder.

Also, even in his tipsy state, he could not cast off care: he might in
his cups reveal the dangerous secret of having found a crock of gold. A
secret still it was: Grace, his wife, and himself, were the only souls
who knew it. Dear Grace feared to say a word about the business: not in
apprehension of the law, for she never thought of that too probable
intrusion on the finder: but simply because her unsophisticated piety
believed that God, for some wise end, had allowed the Evil One to tempt
her father; she, indeed, did not know the epigram,

The devil now is wiser than of yore:
He tempts by making rich--not making poor:

but she did not conceive that notion in her mind; she contrasted the
wealthy patriarch Job, tried by poverty and pain, bu