burn the slimy stuff, I warn't going to put my mouth out o' taste
o' bacca, for a whole jawful of tooth-aches: I'll tell you, dame, what I
did with them ere crocks, wholes, and parts. There's never a stone on
Pike Island, it's too swampy, and I'd forgot to bring my pocketful, as
usual. The heaviest fish, look you, always lie among the sedge,
hereabouts and thereabouts, and needs stirring, as your Tom knows well;
so I chucked the gallipots fur from me, right and left, into the
shallows, and thereby druv the pike upon my hooks. A good night's work I
made of it too, say nothing of the Savings-bank; forty pound o' pike and
twelve of eel warn't bad pickings."

"Dear, it was a pity though to fling away the honey; but what became of
the shawl, Ben?" Perhaps Mrs. Acton thought of looking for it.

"Oh, as for that, I was minded to have sunk it, with its mess of
sweet-meats and potsherds; but a thought took me, dame, to be
'conomical for once: and I was half sorry too that I'd flung away the
jars, for I began to fancy your little uns might ha' liked the stuff; so
I dipped the clout like any washerwoman, rinshed, and squeezed, and
washed the mess away, and have worn it round my waist ever since; here,
dame, I haven't been this way for a while afore to-night; but I meant to
ask you if you'd like to have it; may be 'tan't the fashion though."

"Good gracious, Ben! why that's Mrs. Quarles's shawl, I'd swear to it
among a hundred; Sarah Stack, at the Hall, once took and wore it, when
Mrs. Quarles was ill a-bed, and she and our Thomas walked to church
together. Yes--green, edged with red, and--I thought so--a yellow circle
in the middle; here's B.Q., for Bridget Quarles, in black cotton at the
corner. Lackapity! if they'd heard of all this at the Inquest! I tell
you what, Big Ben, it's kindly meant of you, and so thank you heartily,
but that shawl would bring us into trouble; so please take it yourself
to the Hall, and tell 'em fairly how you came by it."

"I don't know about that Poll Acton; perhaps they might ask me for the
Saving-bank, too--eh, Roger!"

"No, no, wife; no, it'll never do to lose the money! let a bygone be a
bygone, and don't disturb the old woman in her grave. As to the shawl,
if it's like to be a tell-tale, in my mind, this hearth's the safest
place for it."

So he flung it on the fire; there was a shrivelling, smouldering, guilty
sort of blaze, and the shawl was burnt.

Roger Acton, you are falling quickly a