LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2282, 26 July 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

THE SACKFUL OF SOVEREIGNS.

[from “London Society.”

Chapter 111

THE IUCK. ( Concluded .)

< So much the better.’ continued tho sailor; < the less chance of tho place having been disturbed.’ . Then the three, with Lilian following, all now quite excited by Tom’s idea, soon found thoir way to the inner side of tho garden wall, through the ivied arch at tho front entrance. Tho seaman, with his experienced eye, first of all took a general survey. Then, pushing hia way through the tangled bushes, scattering tho snow, now softened by tho warm snn, in showers right and loft, halted beneath a wide spreading gnarled apple tree. ‘There’s the doll’s nest,’ he exclaimed, pointing up to a great bulging bole or knot where two large branches forked ; 1 1 feel inclined to swing myself up into it as I used, only I’m afaid It wouldn’t bear mo now. Yes, there it is, and now I’ve got it in a line with the chimneys, just as in the old days. Then twenty long strides will bring me down close under the wall ab ! But this brushwood is thicker than it used to be,’ he continued, as he tramped heavily through neglected undergrowth, his companions watching him from the upper slope by the strip of kitchen garden. He has reached to within a yard of the wall, and he stands peering for awhile in amongst the densest part of the tangle. Lifting a branch there with his stick, and putting two or three aside here with his hands, he makes another step forward, peers down once or twice again, throws up his arm as if in signal to those behind, and then with a shout plunges, as it seems, headlong into the bushes, and all but appears, George gets down to him in a minute or two, and by the time Alice has managed, with astounding disregard of flounces, and the effect of wet and thorns upon them, to come up with tho pioneers, she sees them engaged in clearing aside with feet and hands a mass of accumulated rubbish —fallen leaves, earth, and underwood. The snow has been very light, and has not penetrated far below the upper twigs. ‘A spade, a spade,’ calls ont Tom, ‘or a pick of some sort 1’ ‘ Lilian, go to the tool-house,’ cries her father.

And the child, who is only half-way down the slope, runs back, and soon reappears, struggling with a spade. Alice relieves the little hands of their unwieldy burden, and takes it down to Tom, sending the child back to the house for fear of her taking cold. Five minutes pass, and the sailor, by hacking at the hashes and delving into tho earth, has laid hare the top of a queerlooking, half-bricked, half-tiled sort of structure. He lifts away some of the tiles with which a portion of it is covered, and discloses the upper end of a large leathern sack, all mouldy and begrimed, having a kind of brass binding and hasp fastened by a rusty padlock. With low muttered exclamations from Tom, and much gasping and puffing from George, by degrees a regular clearance is made, and there lies exposed to view the whole of an enormous sack, nearly five feet long and three feet wide. A clasp knife flies out from the sailor’s pocket, the leather is ripped open, and the sack is discovered to be crammed with a succession of canvas bags. With soma difficulty, for it is very heavy, Tom, having handed the spade to George, is the first to lift one of these ont. It Is firmly tied at tho mouth with strong string and sealed, and has a parchment label with the sum £IOOO in figures marked upon it. Again the knife is used with more impatience than ever, and Tom, dipping his hand in, prodaces a dozen or more bright sovereigns. ‘ Hurrah! hurrah ! Here it Is, then,’ cries Tom—‘the main balk of my property—hidden, baried, after the fashion of our old money-box. And here it has lain, certainly for five, and who can say for how many more years.’ Bag by bag is removed from the leathern sack ; the sample which has been opened explains what they each are filled with. There they are—forty of them, all alike, tied and labelled alike, each weighing about seventeen pounds—a solid mats of some elx hundredweight of gold, ‘Total,’ says George, with a facetious assumption of the banker’s air, when, with much labor and hurrying to and fro, everything has been conveyed very quietly and secretly into the house, £40,003 in gold. The surprise, the excitement, and the general commotion which went on while these facts were being arrived at no words can describe. Howevir, there was Matthew Rickman’s accumulated wealth at last, standing in forty bags upon the table and floor in tho little parlor. But how his heirs and executors bshaved and what they said must, in detail, be left to the imagination. They walked round it, and felt it, moved first one bag and then another to try if they were all of the same weight. Then they counted a few sovereigns from the bag that had been opened, and then put them in again ; and the whole time they were all talking, every one of them, all at once, and not a soul listening. They exclaimed, they wondered, they laughed, and of course, Alice cried, and Lilian followed suit. And it is quite impossible to say how long this sort of thing went on, for everything they did they did fifty times, and everything they said they said at least a hundred times over and over again, and the performance might have lasted till ‘ crack of doom,’ but for the closing in of the short Christmas day. This seemed to suggest a practical remark to George, and to which at length the rest seemed inclined to listen. ‘lt ia all very well,’ he cried, ‘but we can’t dine off gold, at least not at present, and I’m getting hungry.’ Then It suddenly occurred to them all that they were hungry ; and then the good oldfashioned general servant, who had been looking in from time to time at the parlor door, and who had not yet quite mastered whst had happened, was told to bring dinner. So, finally, the treasure was otowed away in a corner, just. Tom said, as if it had been so many bags of sawdust, such as he used to have in his toy miller’s cart, and which he always stabled in the self-same corner.

Whilst the cloth was being laid the whole party looked oat of the window, apparently entirely absorbed by their own thoughts. After a long silenco, Tom said, as he gazed absently in tho direction of the little sum-mer-house, ‘That’s where he got them.’

‘ Got what ?’ inquired George. ‘ The materials to make hia strong room with As I looked through the bushes just now I perceived some remnants of old tiles, and I saw at a glance they were the same sort as those in that patch in the roof of the suinrcer-houae. They would not have suggested anything In themselves ; bat seeing them where I did, with what I had in my mind, they confirmed my suspicion, and the first kick or two I gave to the earth settled the question. ‘ Why. of course, exclaimed George ; ‘the old gentleman had the roof mended while we were away that year, not a month before he died, and no doubt he secreted some of the workmen’s materials for this purpose.’ ‘ Only fancy ! ’ cried Alice ; and the sack where did he get the sack, do you think ? ’

‘ O, simply had it made years ago, no doubt, when this idea first possessed him,’ was Tom’s rejoinder. ‘ Well, God bless him,’ said Alice; * he never meant that we should have so much

trouble about it all, poor dear father ! God bless him, I tay again. 1 ‘ And they all answered, ‘ Amen.’ Presently after this the Christmas feast was served, and wo may bo pretty sure that there was not a merrier or happier Chrismsrdinnor party throughout the length and breadth cf tho land to be found that day. Thera was no melancholy tono in tho talk cow ; it was all in tho bright high happy koy. • And why not ? ’ asks George. ‘lf grandfather had not buried tho money in the orchard, why, I might have buried it in tho copper-mine—who knows P No, it is all for the best, depend upon it; and I call it a wonderful story of Christmas luck. Tom will have half, and Alice will have half—twenty thousand pounds apiece—and we will invest tho whole in the Three per Cents, That will be enough for us, won’t it? Yea, wonderful luck,’ ho continued ; only I can’t make out my dream, for it must have been a dream, after fall; it could not have been anything else,’ ‘Ahj go wo may say,’ broke in Tom solemnly, ‘ and so most people would say ; and they would tell you that it was my talking abont the doll’s nest just before we went to bed that started the dream in yonr head, George ; but I’m not for having everything cut and dried and explained in this matter of-faot sort of fashion. I say I have seen enough to know that it can’t be done ; things happen in this world that bafils tho wisest—that is, it those can be counted the wisest who are not inclined sometimes to accept mysterious dispensations as the ruling of a higher power than man’s. ’ Just for two or three minutes everybody looked grave; but after that they soon recovered, and the merry making was resumed without one jot of alloy—resumed and kept up until a quite absurdly late hour for the inhabitants of the little quiet home upon the Highgate slope.