No, he
wouldn't; he would look at his money; that would cheer him. He unripped a
certain part of his straw mattress and took out a bag of gold. He spread
three hundred sovereigns on the floor and put the candle down among them.
They sparkled; they were all new ones, and he rubbed them with an old
toothbrush and whiting every week. "That's better than any fire," he
said, "they warm the heart. For one thing, they are my own: at all
events, I did not steal them, nor take them of a thief for a bribe to
keep dark and defraud honest folk." Then remorse gripped him: he asked
himself what he was going to do. "To rob an angel," was the answer. "The
fourteen thousand pounds is all hers, and I could give it her in a
moment. Curse him, he would have killed me for it."
Then he pottered about and took out his will. "Ah," said he, "that is all
right so far. But what is a paltry three hundred when I help do her out
of fourteen thousand? Villain!" Then, to ease his conscience, he took a
slip of paper and wrote on it a short account of the Receipt, and how he
came by it, and lo: as if an unseen power had guided his hand, he added,
"Miss Dodd lives at 66, Pembroke Street, and I am going to take it to her
as soon as I am well of my cold.
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