bitually with a pitchfork in his
hand.

Nothing could be easier, then, than for David on this Sunday afternoon to
decline going to church, on the ground that he was going to tea at Mr.
Lunn's, whose pretty daughter Sally had been an early flame of his, and,
when the church-goers were at a safe distance, to abstract the guineas
from their wooden box and slip them into a small canvas bag--nothing
easier than to call to the cowboy that he was going, and tell him to keep
an eye on the house for fear of Sunday tramps. David thought it would be
easy, too, to get to a small thicket and bury his bag in a hole he had
already made and covered up under the roots of an old hollow ash, and he
had, in fact, found the hole without a moment's difficulty, had uncovered
it, and was about gently to drop the bag into it, when the sound of a
large body rustling towards him with something like a bellow was such a
surprise to David, who, as a gentleman gifted with much contrivance, was
naturally only prepared for what he expected, that instead of dropping
the bag gently he let it fall so as to make it untwist and vomit forth
the shining guineas. In the same moment he looked up and saw his dear
brother Jacob close upon him, holding the pitchfork so that the bright
smooth prongs were a yard in advance of his own body, and about a foot
off David's. (A learned friend, to whom I once narrated this history,
observed that it was David's guilt which made these prongs formidable,
and that the "mens nil conscia sibi" strips a pitchfork of all terrors. I
thought this idea so valuable, that I obtained his leave to use it on
condition of suppressing his name.) Nevertheless, David did not entirely
lose his presence of mind; for in that case he would have sunk on the
earth or started backward; whereas he kept his ground and smiled at
Jacob, who nodded his head up and down, and said, "Hoich, Zavy!" in a
painfully equivocal manner. David's heart was beating audibly, and if he
had had any lips they would have been pale; but his mental activity,
instead of being paralysed, was stimulated. While he was inwardly
praying (he always prayed when he was much frightened)--"Oh, save me this
once, and I'll never get into danger again!"--he was thrusting his hand
into his pocket in search of a box of yellow lozenges, which he had
brought with him from Brigford among other delicacies of the same
portable kind, as a means of conciliating proud beauty, and more
parti