"Yes, yes, he's far enough off," answered Trevethick, more peevishly than before, for Sol's remark seemed to foreshadow the very subject he would fain have avoided talking about. "He's gone to Plymouth, he is, and won't be back these five days."

"Umph!" said Sol. If he had said, "I wish he would never come back at all," he could not have expressed his feelings more clearly.

"Well," growled Trevethick, when they were in his sanctum, and had shut the door, "what is it now? Bad news, of course, of some sort."

It was a habit with Trevethick, as it is with many men of his stamp, to have a perpetual grievance against Providence--to profess themselves as never astonished at any bad turn that _It_ may do them--and, besides, he was on the present occasion desirous of taking up a position of discontent beforehand, so that the expected topic might not appear to have produced it.

"No; it's good news, Trevethick," said Solomon, quietly--"the best of news, as it seems to me; and I hope to bring you over to the same opinion."

"He's got some scheme for marrying Harry out of hand," thought the hara.s.sed landlord. "How the deuce shall I put him off?"

There was not the slightest excuse for doing so; if Solomon had been of a less phlegmatic disposition, he might have married her a year ago, young as she was. "Read this," said he, producing a letter from his pocket, "and tell me what you think of it. It's old Stratum's report upon the mine."

"Ay, ay," said Trevethick, diving into his capacious pocket for his silver spectacles. As a general rule, he was wont to receive all such reports with discredit, and to throw cold water upon Sol's more sanguine views; but it was several minutes before he could get himself into his normal state of dissatisfied depression, so much relieved was he to find that his daughter was not to be the topic of the conversation.

"Here's the plan," continued Solomon, "which accompanied the letter. I got it just after I dismissed the men; and, upon my life, I'd half a mind to set them on again. But I thought I'd just have a talk with you first."

"Ay," said Trevethick--"well?" He was quite himself again now--crafty, prudent, reticent; about as unpromising a gentleman to "get on with,"

far less get the better of in a bargain, as a Greek Jew. But Solomon was quite accustomed to him.

"Stratum feels confident about the continuation of the lode, you see; and also that the fault is not considerable. We shall not have to sink fifty feet, he thinks, before we come on the vein again."

"He _thinks_" said Trevethick, contemptuously. "Is he ready to sink his own money in it?"

"It's no good asking him that," said Solomon, coolly, "because he's got none. But I have always found Stratum pretty correct in his judgment; and, as for me, I believe in Dunloppel. The question is, shall I go on with it single-handed, or will you go shares?"

"If it's so good a thing, why not keep it yourself, Sol?"

"Because my money is particularly well laid out at present, and I don't want to shift it."

"That's just the case with mine," said Trevethick, from behind the plan.

"I thought you might have five hundred pounds or so lying idle, that's all," returned the other. "I'd give six per cent. for it just now."

"Oh, that's another thing. Perhaps I have. I'll see about it."

"If you could get it me at once, that would be half the battle," urged Solomon. "There are some good men at the mine whom I should not like to lose. If I could send round to-night to tell them not to engage, themselves elsewhere, since they're opening so many new pits just now, that would be a relief to my mind."

"Very good; you may do that, then. I'll write for the money to-morrow."

So blunt, straightforward, and exceedingly unpleasant a man as John Trevethick was, ought to have been the very incarnation of Truth, whereas that last observation of his was, to say the least of it, Jesuitical. There was no occasion to write to any body for what he had got above stairs, locked up in his private strong-box. But he did not wish all the world to know that, nor even his _alter ego_, Solomon Coe.

Trevethick, although a close-fisted fellow, was no miser in the vulgar sense. He kept this vast sum at hand, partly because he had no confidence in ordinary securities, and partly because he wished to be in a position, at a moment's notice, to accomplish his darling scheme. If Carew should happen to change his mind, it would be because he was in want of ready money, and he would be in mad haste to get it. His impatience on such occasions brooked no delay on the score of advantage; and the man that could offer him what he wanted, as it were, in his open hand, would be the financier he would favor in preference to a much less grasping accommodator, who might keep him waiting for a week. It was not so much the tempting bait of ready money that caught the Squire as the fact of his wishes being obeyed upon the instant. He had not been used to wait, and his pride revolted against it; and many a time had a usurer missed his mark by not understanding with how great a bashaw he had to deal in the person of Carew of Crompton. Trevethick was aware of this, and indeed the chaplain had given him a hint to keep the proposed purchase-money within easy reach, in case the Squire's mood might alter, or his necessities demand his consent to what Mr. Whymper honestly believed to be a very advantageous offer. Otherwise, Trevethick was not one to keep a h.o.a.rd in his house for the mere pleasure of gloating over it. He had not looked into his strong-box for months, nor would he have done so now, but for this unexpected demand upon it. It was safe enough, he knew, in his daughter's room; and as for its having been opened, that was an impossibility; the padlock hung in front of it as usual, and it would have taken a man half a lifetime to have hit upon its open sesame by trial. He was justly proud of that letter lock, which was his own contrivance, invented when he was quite a young man, and had been perforce compelled to turn his attention to mechanics, and he considered it a marvel of skill. It was characteristic in him that he had never revealed its secret even to his daughter. Indeed, with the exception of Harry, n.o.body at Gethin--save, perhaps, Hannah, when she dusted her young mistress's room--had ever set eyes upon it, nor, if they had, would they have understood its meaning.

It was therefore without the slightest suspicion of its having been tampered with, that, an hour or two after the conversation just narrated, Trevethick repaired to his strong-box, with the intention of taking from it the sum of money required by Solomon. The padlock was like a little clock, except that it had the letters of the alphabet round its face instead of figures, and three hands instead of two; this latter circ.u.mstance insured, by its complication, the safety of the treasure, but at the same time rendered it useless--unless he broke the box open--to the possessor himself if by any accident he should forget the letter time at which he had set it; and accordingly Trevethick was accustomed to carry a memorandum of this about with him; even if he lost it, it would be no great matter, for what meaning would it convey to any human being to find a bit of paper with the letters B, N, Z upon it?

Harry, as we have said, was out of the house, so his daughter's room was untenanted. He went to a cupboard, and took down the box from its usual shelf, with the same feeling of satisfaction that an old poet recurs to his first volume of verse; he may have written better things, and things that have brought him more money, but those spring leaves are dearest to him of all. So it was with Trevethick's spring lock. He adjusted the hands, and the padlock sprang open; he lifted the lid, and the box was empty; the two thousand pounds in Bank of England notes were gone.

He was a big bull-necked man, of what is called (in the reports of inquests) "a full habit of body," and the discovery was almost fatal to him. His face grew purple, the veins in his forehead stood out, and his well-seasoned head, which liquor could so little affect, went round and round with him, and sang like a humming-top. He was on the very brink of a fit, which might have "annihilated s.p.a.ce and time" (as far as he was concerned), "and made two lovers happy." But the star of Richard Yorke was not in the ascendant. The old man held on by the shelf of the cupboard, and gradually came to himself. He did not even then comprehend the whole gravity of the position; the sense of his great loss--not only of so much wealth, but of that which he had secured with such toil, and laid by unproductively so long for the accomplishment of his darling purpose--monopolized his mind. Who _could_ have been the thief? was the one question with which he concerned himself, and the answer was not long delayed. It was the coincidence of amount in the sum stolen with that which Richard had gone to Plymouth to realize, that turned his suspicions upon the young artist. Why, the scoundrel had fixed upon that very sum as the test of his possessing an independence for a reason that was now clear enough: it was the exact limit of what he knew he could lay his hand upon. But how _did_ he know?--or, rather (for the old man's thoughts were still fixed upon the mechanical mystery of his loss), how did he open the padlock? Then there flashed upon his mind that incident of his having dropped the memorandum out of his watch-case in the bar parlor in Richard's presence, and the whole affair seemed as clear as day. It was Richard's intention to change the notes at Plymouth for the paper of the Miners' Bank, or for gold, and then to exhibit it to him in its new form as his own property. He did not believe that the young artist intended to steal it; but he was by no means less furious with him upon that account--quite otherwise. He piqued himself upon his caution and long-headedness, and resented every deception practiced upon him even more than an injury. Moreover, he felt that but for Solomon's unexpected request for the loan the plan would have succeeded. In all probability, he would not have discovered his loss until it had been too late--he would not have known how to refuse the young man leave to become his daughter's suitor; and once his son-in-law, he could scarcely have prosecuted him for replacing two thousand pounds' worth of bank-notes in his strong-box by notes of another kind. Exasperated beyond all measure as Trevethick was, it did credit to his sagacity that even at such a moment he did not conceive of Richard Yorke as being a common thief. But he concluded him to be much worse, and deserving of far heavier punishment, as a man that would have obtained his daughter under false pretenses. He went down stairs, taking the box with him, to seek his friend. Solomon had just returned from the cottage over the way, where he had been giving orders to one of the best miners to still hold himself engaged at Dunloppel, and had bidden him tell others the same. He was in high spirits, and was twirling about in his large hands Mr. Stratum's diagnosis of the mine.

"You may put that away and have done with it," said Trevethick, hoa.r.s.ely; "I have no money to lend you for that, nor nothing else. This box held two thousand pounds of mine, but it's all gone now."

"Two thousand pounds!" exclaimed Solomon, too amazed at the magnitude of the sum to realize what had happened to it. "Two thousand pounds in a box!" He had always suspected that the old man kept something in a stocking-foot, and had often rallied him upon his unnecessary caution with respect to investments; but this statement of his appeared incredible.

"What does it matter if it was twenty thousand, when I tell you it's gone," said Trevethick, sullenly. "That limb of the devil, Yorke, is off with every shilling of it."

"Do you mean to say _he's_ stolen it?" inquired the other, even more astonished than before.

"He's taken it to Plymouth with him, that's all."

Solomon Coe was a man of action, and prompt in emergencies, but for the moment he was fairly staggered. He had no liking for Richard, but such a charge as this appeared incredible; it seemed more likely that the old man had repented of his late offer of the loan of five hundred pounds, and had invented this monstrous fiction to excuse himself.

"Where was the box kept?" asked Solomon, dryly.

For a moment or two Trevethick was silent.

"It is as I suspected," thought the other; "the old man is making up the story as he goes on."

But the fact was that this question had gone to the very root of the matter, and opened Trevethick's dull eyes wide. In his chagrin at his loss (though he did believe it would be temporary), and irritation at his sagacity having been set at naught, he had overlooked the most serious feature of the whole catastrophe. How had Yorke come to the knowledge that the strong-box was kept in Harry's room? and under what circ.u.mstances had he obtained access to it?

"Where's Harry?" exclaimed Trevethick, starting up with a great oath; for it flashed upon him that she had fled with Richard. "Where's my daughter?"

"I saw her in the village just now," said Solomon, "talking to old Madge. She had been for a stroll out Turlock way, she said. But what's the use of vexing _her_ about the matter? Women are much best kept in the dark when one don't want things to be talked about. The more quiet you keep this story, the more chance you'll have of getting your money back, you may depend upon it. It was in notes, of course?"

"Yes, in notes," answered the other, with a vacant look, and drumming on the table with his right hand.

"Come, come, Trevethick, you must keep your head," remonstrated Solomon.

"I'll act for you quick enough, if you'll only supply me with the means.

It's a great loss, but it should not paralyze a man. You've got a memorandum of the numbers of the notes?"

"Yes, yes; I have somewhere."

"Well; go and fetch it, while I order out a horse. I can get to Plymouth before wheels can do it, and shall catch this scoundrel yet. He'll be going there to change the notes, I reckon?"

"Yes, yes," said Trevethick; "he'll be at the _George and Vulture_; so he said."

"Good," replied Solomon. "I'll get a warrant from old Justice Smallgood on my way. Rouse up, man, rouse up; you shall have your money back, I tell you, and see this rascal lagged for life into the bargain."

"If I could only get him hanged!" answered the old man, fiercely--"if I could only get _him_ hanged, Sol, I'd let the money go, and welcome!"

Solomon stared after him, as he left the room and tramped up stairs in search of the list of notes, with a ludicrous expression of wonder. In _his_ eyes, no revenge at present seemed worth so extravagant a price.

But Trevethick had his reasons, or thought he had, for this excess of hate; his slow-moving yet powerful nature resembled the python--it was exceedingly tenacious when its object was once grasped, and it was apt to glut itself.

CHAPTER XXIV.

A HARD ALTERNATIVE.