eels. All at once, while I was fixing a trimmer, a
punt came quietly up: as for me, Roger, you know I always wades it
through the muddy shallow: well, I listens, and a chap creeps ashore--a
mad chap, with never a tile to his head, nor a sole to his feet--and
when I sings out to ax him his business, the lunatic sprung at me like a
tiger: I didn't wish to hurt a little weak wretch like him, specially
being past all sense, poor nat'ral! so I shook him off at once, and held
him straight out in this here wice." [Ben's grasp could have cracked any
cocoa-nut.] "He trembled like a wicked thing; and when I peered close
into his face, blow me but I thought I'd hooked a white devil--no one
ever see such a face: it was horrible too look at. 'What are you arter,
mun?' says I; 'burying a dead babby?' says I. 'Give us hold here--I'm
bless'd if I don't see though what you've got buckled up there.' With
that, the little white fool--it's sartin he was mad--all on a sudden
flings at my head a precious hard bundle, gives a horrid howl, jumps
into the punt, and off again, afore I could wink twice. My head a'n't a
soft un, I suppose; but when a lunatic chap hurls at it with all his
might a barrow-load of crockery at once, it's little wonder that my
right eye flinched a minute, and that my right hand rubbed my right eye;
and so he freed himself, and got clear off. Rum start this, thinks I:
but any how he's flung away a summut, and means to give it me: what can
it be? thinks I. Well, neighbours, if I didn't know the chap was mad
afore, I was sartain of it now; what do you think of a grown man--little
enough, truly, but out of long coats too--sneaking by night to Pike
Island, to count out a little lot of silver, and to guzzle twelve
gallipots o' honey? There it was, all hashed up in an old shawl, a slimy
mesh like birdlime: no wonder my eye was a leetle blackish, when
half-a-dozen earthern crocks were broken against it. I was angered
enough, I tell you, to think any man could be such a fool as to bring
honey there to eat or to hide--when at once I spied summut red among
the mess; and what should it be but a pretty little China house,
red-brick-like, with a split in the roof for droppings, and ticketed
'Savings-bank:' the chink o' that bank you hears now: and the bank
itself is in the pond, now I've cleaned the till out."

"Wonderful sure! But what did you do with the honey, Ben?--some of the
pots wasn't broke," urged notable Mrs. Acton.

"Oh,