CHAPTER LI.
UNFILIAL
"At seven o'clock all must be ready," said Mr. Sharp, towards the close of a hurried conversation with Miss Patch, Grace Oglander being sent out of the way, according to established signal; "there is no time to lose, and no ladies' tricks of unpunctuality, if you please. We must have day-light for these horrid forest-roads, and time it so as to get into the London road about half-past eight. We must be in London by two in the morning; the horses, and all that will be forthcoming. Kit rides outside, and I follow on horse-back. Hannah, why do you hesitate?"
"Because I cannot – I cannot go away, without having seen that Jesuit priest in the pig-net wallowing. It is such a grand providential work – the arm of the Lord has descended from heaven, and bound him in his own meshes. Luke, I beg you, I implore you – I can pack up everything in an hour – do not rob me of a sight like that."
"Hannah, are you mad? You have never been allowed to go near that place, and you never shall!"
"Well, you know best; but it does seem very cruel, after all the lack of grace I have borne with here, to miss the great Protestant work thus accomplished. But suppose that the child should refuse to come with us – we have no letters now, nor any other ministration."
"We have no time now for such trumpery; we must carry things now with a much higher hand. Everything hangs upon the next few hours; and by this time to-morrow night all shall be safe: Kit and the girl gone for their honeymoon, and you sitting under the most furious dustman that ever thumped a cushion."
"Oh, Luke, how can you speak as if you really had no reverence?"
"Because there is no time for such stuff now. We have the strength, and we must use it. Just go and get ready. I must ride to meet my people. The girl, I suppose, is with Kit by this time. What a pair of nincompoops they will be!"
"I am sure they will be a very pretty pair – so far as poor sinful exterior goes – and, what is of a thousand-fold more importance, their worldly means will be the means of grace to hundreds of our poor fellow-creatures, who, because their skin is of a different tint, and in their own opinion a finer one, are debarred – "
"Now, Hannah, no time for that. Get ready. And mind that there must be no feminine weakness if circumstances should compel us to employ a little compulsion. Call to your mind that the Lord is with us; the sword of the Lord and of Gideon."
Pleased with his knowledge of Holy Writ, he went to the place where his horse was tied, and there he found a man with a message for him, which he just stopped to hearken.
"As loovin' as a pair o' toortle doves; he hath a-got her by the middle; as sweet as my missus were to me, afore us went to church togither!" Black George had been set to watch Kit and Gracie, during their private interview, lest any precaution should be overlooked.
"Right! Here's a guinea for you, my man. Now, you know what to do till I come back – to stay where you are, and keep a sharp look-out. Can the fool in the net do without any water? Very well, after dark, give him some food, bandage his eyes, and walk him to and fro, and let him go in Banbury.
"All right, governor. A rare bait he shall have of it, with a little swim in the canal, to clane un."
"No hardship, no cruelty!" cried Mr. Sharp, with his finger to his forehead, as he rode away; "only a little wise discipline to lead him into closer attention to his own affairs."
Black George looked after his master with a grin of admiration. "He sticketh at nort," said George to himself, as he began to fill a grimy pipe; "he sticketh at nort no more than I would. And with all that house and lands to back un! Most folk with money got no pluck left, for thinking of others as owneth the same. I'll be danged if he dothn't carry on as bold as if he slep' in a rabbit-hole." With these words he sat down to watch the house, according to his orders.
But this man's description of what he had seen in the wood was not a correct one – much as he meant to speak the truth – for many reasons, and most of all this: that he ran away before the end of it. It was a pretty and a moving scene; but the rabbit-man cared a great deal more for the pipe, which he could not smoke in this duty, and the guinea which he hoped to get out of it. And it happened, as near as one can tell, on this wise:
Grace Oglander, came down the winding wooded path, with her heart pit-a-patting at every step, because she was ordered to meet somebody. An idea of that kind did not please her. A prude, or a prim, she would never wish to be; and a little bit of flirting had been a great relief, and a pleasant change in her loneliness. But to bring matters to so stern a point, and have to say what she meant to say, in as few words as possible, and then walk off – these strong measures were not to her liking, because she was a most kind-hearted girl, and had much good-will towards Christopher.
Kit on the other hand, came along fast, with a resolute brow and firm heavy stride. He had made up his mind to be wretched for life, if the heart upon which he had set his own should refuse to throb responsively. But whatever his fate might be, he would tread the highest path of generosity, chivalry, and honour; and this resolution was well set forth in the following nervous and pathetic lines, found in his blotting-paper after his untimely – but stay, let us not anticipate. These words had been watered with a flood of tears.
"C. F. S. to Miss G. O
Say that happier mortal woos thee,
Say that nobler knight pursues thee,
While this blighted being teareth
All the festive robes it weareth,
While this dead heart splits to lose thee —
Ah, could I so misuse thee?
Though this bosom, rent by thunder,
Crash its last hope anchor'd in thee;
Liefer would I groan thereunder,
Than by falsehood win thee!"
And now they met in a gentle place, roofed with leaves, and floored with moss, and decorated with bluebells. The chill of the earth was gone by and forgotten, and the power of the sky come back again; stately tree, and graceful bush, and brown depths of tangled prickliness – everything having green life in it – was spreading its green, and proud of it. Under this roof, and in these halls of bright young verdure, the youth and the maid came face to face befittingly. Grace, as bright as a rose, and flushing with true tint of wild rose, drew back and bowed, and then, perceiving serious hurt of Christopher, kindly offered a warm white hand – a delicious touch for any one. Kit laid hold of this and kept it, though with constant fear of doing more than was established, and, trying to look firm and overpowering, led the fair young woman to a trunk of fallen oak.
Here they both sat down; and Grace was not so far as she could wish from yielding to a little kind of trembling which arose in her. She glanced at Kit sideways whenever she felt that he could not be looking at her; and she kept her wise eyes mainly downward whenever they seemed to be wanted – not that she could not look up and speak, only that she would rather wait until there was no other help for it; and as for that, she felt no fear, being sure that he was afraid of her. Kit, on the other hand, was full of fear, and did all he could in the craftiest manner to make his love look up at him. He could not tell how she might take his tale; but he knew by instinct that his eyes would help him where his tongue might fail. At last he said —
"Now, will you promise faithfully not to be angry with me?"
"Oh yes, oh yes – to be sure," said Grace; "why should I be angry?"
"Because I can't help it – I give you my honour. I have tried very hard, but I cannot help it."
"Then who could be angry with you, unless it was something very wicked?"
"It is not very wicked, it is very good – too good for me, a great deal, I am afraid."
"There cannot be many things too good for you; you are simple, and brave, and gentle."
"But this is too good for me, ever so much, because it is your own dear self."
Grace was afraid that this was coming; and now she lifted her soft blue eyes and looked at him quite tenderly, and yet so directly and clearly that he knew in a moment what she had for him – pity, and trust, and liking; but of heart's love not one atom.
"I know what you mean," he whispered sadly, with his bright young face cast down. "I cannot think what can have made me such a fool. Only please to tell me one thing. Has there been any chap in front of me?"
"How can I tell what you mean?" asked Grace; but her colour showed that she could guess.
"I must not ask who it is, of course. Only say it's not the swell that drives the four bay horses."
"I do not know any one that drives four bay horses. And now I think that I had better go. Only, as I cannot ever meet you any more, I must try to tell you that I like you very much, and never shall forget what I owe to you; and I hope you will very soon recover from this – this little disappointment; and my dear father, as soon as we return to England – for I must go to fetch him – "
"Grace – oh, let me call you 'Grace' once or twice, it can't matter here in the middle of the wood – Grace, I was so taken up with myself, and full of my miserable folly, which of course I ought to have known better – "
"I must not stop to hear any more. There is my hand – yes, of course you may kiss it, after all that you have done for me."
"I am going to do a great deal more for you," cried Kit, quite carried away with the yielding kindness of lovely fingers. "For your sake I am going to injure and disgrace my own father – though the Lord knows the shame is of his own making. It is my father who has kept you here; and to-night he is going to carry you off. Miss Patch is only a tool of his. Your own father knows not a word about it. He believes you to be dead and buried. Your tombstone is set up at Beckley, and your father goes and cries over it."
"But his letters – his letters from Demerara? Oh! my head swims round! Let me hold by this tree for a moment!"
Kit threw his arm round her delicate waist to save her from falling; and away crept George, who had lurked behind a young birch-tree too far off to hear their words.
"You must rouse up your courage," said Kit, with a yearning gaze at his sweet burden, yet taking no advantage of her. "Rouse up your courage, and I will do my best to save you from myself. It is very hard – it is cruelly cruel, and nobody will thank me!"
"His letters from Demerara!" cried Grace, having scarcely heard a word he said. "How could he have written them? You must be wrong."
"Of such letters I have never heard. I suppose they must have been forgeries. I give you my word that your father has been the whole of the time at Beckley, and a great deal too ill to go from home."
"Too ill! – my father? Yes, of course – of course! How could he help being ill without me? And he thinks I am dead? Oh! he thinks that I am dead! I wonder that he could dare to be alive. But let me try to think a little."
She tottered back to the old stump of the tree, and sat down there, and burst forth into an extraordinary gush of weeping: more sad and pitiful tears had never watered an innocent face before. "Let me cry! – let me cry!" was her only answer when the young man clumsily tried to comfort.
Kit got up and strode about; his indignation at her deep low sobs, and her brilliant cheeks like a river's bed, and her rich hair dabbled like drifted corn, and above all the violent pain which made her lay both hands to her heart and squeeze – his wrath made him long to knock down people entitled to his love and reverence. He knew that her heart was quite full of her father in all his long desolation, and was making a row of pictures of him in deepening tribulation; but a girl might go on like that for ever; a man must take the lead of her.
"If you please, Miss Oglander," he said, going up and lifting both her hands, and making her look up at him, "you have scarcely five minutes to make up your mind whether you wish to save your father, or to be carried away from him."
Grace in confusion and fear looked up. All about herself she had forgotten; she had even forgotten that Kit was near; she was only pondering slowly now – as the mind at most critical moments does – some straw of a trifle that blew across.
"Do you care to save your father's life?" asked Kit, rather sternly, not seeing in the least the condition of her mind, but wondering at it. "If you do, you must come with me, this moment, down the hill, down the hill, as fast as ever you can. I know a place where they can never find us. We must hide there till dark, and then I will take you to Beckley."
But the young lady's nerves would not act at command. The shock and surprise had been too severe. All she could do was to gaze at Kit, with soft imploring eyes, that tried to beg pardon for her helplessness.
"If we stay here another minute, you are lost!" cried Kit, as he heard the sound of the carriage-wheels near the cottage, on the rise above them. "One question only – will you trust me?"
She moved her pale lips to say "yes," and faintly lifted one hand to him. Kit waited for no other sign, but caught her in his sturdy arms, and bore her down the hill as fast as he could go, without scratching her snow-white face, or tearing the arm which hung on his shoulder.
CHAPTER LII.
UNPATERNAL
Meanwhile, Mr. Sharp had his forces ready, and was waiting for Grace and Christopher. Cinnaminta's good Uncle Kershoe (who spent half of his useful time in stealing horses, and the other half in disguising and disposing of them), although he might not have desired to show himself so long before the moonlight, yet, true to honour, here he was, blinking beneath a three-cornered hat, like a grandly respectable coachman. The carriage was drawn up in a shady place, quite out of sight from the windows; and the horses, having very rare experience of oats, were embracing a fine opportunity. In picturesque attitudes of tobacconizing – if the depth of the wood covers barbarism – three fine fellows might now be seen; to wit, Black George, Joe Smith, and that substantial householder, Tickuss Cripps. In the chaise sat a lady of comfortable aspect, though fidgeting now with fat, well-gloved hands. Mrs. Sharp had begged not to have to stop at home and wonder what might be doing with her own Kit: and the case being now one of "neck or nothing," her husband had let her come, foreseeing that she might be of use with Grace Oglander. For the moment, however, she looked more likely to need attendance for herself; for she kept glancing round towards the cottage-door, while her plump and still comely cheeks were twitching, and tears of deep thought about the merits of her son held her heart in quick readiness to be up and help them. Once Mr. Sharp, whose main good point, among several others, was affection for his wife, rode up, and in a playful manner tickled her nose with the buckskin loop of his loaded whip, and laughed at her. She felt how kind it was of him, but her smile was only feeble.
"Now mind, dear," said Mr. Sharp, reining his horse (as strong as an oak and as bright as a daisy), "feel no anxiety about me. You have plenty of nourishment in your three bags; keep them all alive with it. Everything is mapped out perfectly. Near Wycombe, without rousing any landlord, you have a fresh pair of horses. In a desert place called the 'New Road,' in London, I meet you and take charge of you."
"May Kit have his pipe on the box? I am sure it will make him go so much sweeter."
"Fifty, if he likes. You put his sealskin pouch in. You think of every one before yourself."
"But can I get on with that dreadful woman? Don't you think she will preach me to death, Luke?"
"Miranda, my dear, you are talking loosely. You forget the great gift that you possess – the noblest endowment of the nobler sex. You can sleep whenever you like, and do it without even a suspicion of a snore. It is the very finest form of listening. Good-bye! You will be a most happy party. When once I see you packed, I shall spur on in front."
Mr. Sharp kissed his hand, and rode back to the cottage. Right well he knew what a time ladies take to put their clothes upon them; and the more grow the years of their practice in the art, the longer grow the hours needful. Still he thought Miss Patch had been quite long enough. But what could he say, when he saw her at her window, with the looking-glass sternly set back upon the drawers, lifting her hands in short prayer to the Lord: as genuine a prayer as was ever tried. She was praying for a blessing on this new adventure, and that all might lead up to the glory of the Kingdom; she besought to be relieved at last from her wearying instrumentality. Mr. Sharp still had some little faith left – for he was a man of much good feeling – and he did not scoff at his sister's prayer, as a man of low nature might have done.
Nevertheless he struck up with his whip at the ivy round her bedroom window, to impress the need of brevity; and the lady, though shocked at the suggestion of curtailment, did curtail immediately. In less than five minutes, she was busy at the doorway, seeing to the exit of everything; and presently, with very pious precision, she gave Mrs. Margery Daw half a crown, and a tract which some friend should read to her, after rubbing her glands with a rind of bacon, and a worn-out pocket-handkerchief, which had belonged to the mighty Rowland Hill, whose voice went three miles and a half.
Then Miss Patch (with her dress tucked up, and her spectacles at their brightest) marched, with a copy of the Scriptures borne prominently forward, and the tags of her cloak doubled up on her arm, towards the carriage, where Grace must be waiting for her. The sloping of the sunset threw her shadow, and the ring-doves in the wood were cooing. The peace and the beauty touched even her heart; and the hushing of the winds of evening in the nestling of the wood appeased the ruffled mind to that simplicity of childhood, where God and good are one.
But just as she was shaking hands benevolently with Mrs. Sharp, before getting into the carriage, back rode Mr. Sharp at full gallop, and without any ceremony shouted, "Where's the girl?"
"Miss Oglander! Why, I thought she was here!" Hannah Patch answered, with a little gasp.
"And I thought she was coming with you," cried Mrs. Sharp; "as well as my dear boy, Christopher."
"I let her go to meet him as you arranged," Miss Patch exclaimed decisively; "I had nothing to do with her after that."
"Is it possible that the boy has rogued me?" As Mr. Sharp said these few words, his face took a colour never seen before, even by his loving wife: The colour was, a livid purple, and it made his sparkling eyes look pale.
"They must be at the cottage," Mrs. Sharp suggested; "let me go to look for the naughty young couple."
The lawyer had his reasons for preventing this, as well as for keeping himself where he was; and therefore at a sign from him, Miss Patch turned back, and set off with all haste for the cottage. No sooner had she turned the corner, than Joe Smith, the tall gipsy, emerged from the wood with long strides into the road, and beckoned to Mr. Sharp urgently. The lawyer was with him in a moment, and almost struck him in his fury at what he heard.
"How could you allow it? You great tinkering fool! Run to the corner where the two lanes meet. Take George with you. I will ride straight down the road. No, stop, cut the traces of those two horses! You jump on one, and Black George on the other, and off for the Corner full gallop! You ought to be there before the cart. I will ride straight for that rotten old jolter! Zounds, is one man to beat five of us?" Waiting for no answer, he struck spurs into his horse, and, stooping over the withers, dashed into a tangled alley, which seemed to lead towards the timber-track.
No wonder Mr. Sharp was in such a rage, for what had happened was exactly this – only much of it happened with more speed than words: —
Cripps, the Carrier, had been put up by several friends and relations (especially Numbers, the butcher, who missed the pork trade of Leviticus) to bring things directly to a point, instead of letting them go on, in a way which was neither one thing nor the other. Confessing all the claims of duty, poor Zacchary only asked how he could discharge them. He had done his very best, and he had found out nothing. If any one could tell him what more to do, he would wear out his Sunday shoes to thank them.
"Brother Zak," said Mrs. Numbers, with a feeling which in a less loyal family would have been contempt, "have you set a woman to work; now, have you?"
Every Cripps present was struck with this, and most of all the Carrier. Mrs. Numbers herself was quite ready to go, but a feud had arisen betwixt her and Susannah, as to whether three-holed or four-holed buttons cut the cotton faster; and therefore the Carrier resolved to take his own sister Etty, who never quarrelled. It was found out that she required change of air, and, indeed, she had been rather delicate ever since her long sad task at Shotover. Now, Leviticus durst not refuse to receive her, much as he disliked the plan. The girl went without any idea of playing spy; all she knew was that her brother was suspected of falling into low company, and she was to put him on his mettle, if she could.
Hence it was that Hardenow, gazing betwixt the two feather-edged boards, beheld – just before he lost his wits – the honoured vehicle of Cripps, with empty washing baskets standing, on its welcome homeward road, to discharge the fair Etty at her brother's gate. Tickuss was away upon Mr. Sharp's business, and Zacchary, through a grand sense of honour, would not take advantage of the chance by going in. Craft and wickedness might be in full play with them, but a wife should on no account be taken unawares, and tempted to speak outside her duty.
Therefore the Carrier kissed his sister in the soft gleam of the sunset-clouds, and refusing so much as a glass of ale, touched up Dobbin with a tickle of the whip; and that excellent nag (after looking round for oats in a dream, which his common sense premised to be too sanguine) brushed all his latter elegances with his tail, and fetching round his blinkers a most sad adieu to Esther, gave a little grunt at fortune and resignedly set off. Alas, when he grunted at a light day's work, how little did he guess what unparalleled exertions parted him yet from his stable for the night!
For while Master Cripps, with an equable mind, was jogging it gently on the silent way, and (thinking how lonely his cottage would be without Esther) was balancing in his mind the respective charms of his three admirers, Mary Hookham, Mealy Hiss, and Sally Brown of the Golden Cross, and sadly concluding that he must make up his mind to one of the three ere long – suddenly he beheld a thing which frightened him more than a dozen wives.
Cripps was come to a turn of the track – for it scarcely could be called a road – and was sadly singing to Dobbin and himself that exquisite elegiac —
"Needles and pins, needles and pins,
When a man marries, his trouble begins!"
Dobbin also, though he never had been married, was trying to keep time to this tune, as he always did to sound sentiments; when the two of them saw a sight that came, like a stroke for profanity, over them.
Directly in front of them, from a thick bush, sprang a beautiful girl into the middle of the lane, and spread out her hand to stop them. If the evening light had been a little paler, or even the moon had been behind her, a ghost she must have been then, and for ever. Cripps stared as if he would have no eyes any more; but Dobbin had received a great many comforts from the little hands spread out to him; and he stopped and sniffed, and lifted up his nose (now growing more decidedly aquiline) that it might be stroked, and even possibly regaled with a bunch of white-blossomed clover.
"Oh, Cripps, good Cripps, you dear old Cripps!" Grace Oglander cried with great tears in her eyes, "you never have forgotten me, Zacchary Cripps? They say that I am dead and buried. It isn't true, not a word of it! Dear Cripps, I am as sound alive as you are. Only I have been shamefully treated! Do let me get up in your cart, good Cripps, and my father will thank you for ever!"
"But, Missy, poor Missy," Cripps stammered out, drawing on his heart for every word, "you was buried on the seventh day of January, in the year of our Lord, 1838; three pickaxes was broken over digging of your grave, by reason of the frosty weather; and all of us come to your funeral! Do 'ee go back, miss, that's a dear! The churchyard to Beckley is a comfortable place, and this here wood no place for a Christian."
"But, Cripps, dear Cripps, do try to let me speak! They might have broken thirty pickaxes, but I had nothing at all to do with it. May I get up? Oh, may I get up? It is the only chance of saving me. I hear a horse tearing through the wood! Oh, dear, clever Cripps, you will repent it for the rest of all your life. Even Dobbin is sharper than you are."
"You blessed old ass!" cried a stern young voice, as Kit Sharp (who had meant not to show) rushed forward, "there is no time for your heavy brain to work. You shall have the young lady, dead or alive! Pardon me, Grace – no help for it. Now, thick-headed bumpkin, put one arm round her, and off at full gallop with your old screw! If you give her up I will hang you by the neck to the tail of your broken rattletrap!"
"Oh, Cripps, dear Cripps, I assure you on my honour," said Grace, as tossed up by her lover, she sat in the seat of Esther, "I have never been dead any more than you have. I can't tell you now; oh, drive on, drive, if you have a spark of manhood in you!"
A horse and horseman came out of the wood, about fifty yards behind them, and Grace would have fallen headlong, but for the half-reluctant arm of Cripps, as Dobbin with a jump (quite unknown in his very first assay of harness) set off full gallop over rut and rock, with a blow on his back, from the fist of Kit, like the tumble of a chimney-pot.
Then Christopher Sharp, after one sad look at Grace Oglander's flying figure, turned round to confront his father.
"What means all this?" cried the lawyer fiercely, being obliged to rein up his horse, unless he would trample Kit underfoot.
"It means this," answered his son, with firm gaze, and strong grasp of his bridle, "that you have made a great mistake, sir – that you must give up your plan altogether – that the poor young lady who has been so deceived – "
"Let go my bridle, will you? Am I to stop here – to be baffled by you? Idiot, let go my bridle!"
"Father, you shall not – for your own sake, you shall not! I may be an idiot, but I will not be a blackguard – "
"If by the time I have counted three, your hand is on my bridle, I will knock you down, and ride over you!"
Their eyes met in furious conflict of will, the elder man's glaring with the blaze of an opal, the younger one's steady with a deep brown glow.
"Strike me dead, if you choose!" said Kit, as his father raised his arm, with the loaded whip swinging, and counted, "One, two, three!" – then the crashing blow fell on the naked temple; and it was not needed twice.
Dashing the rowels into his horse (whose knees struck the boy in the chest as he fell, and hurled him among the bushes), the lawyer, without even looking round, rode madly after Zacchary. Dobbin had won a good start by this time, and was round the corner, doing great wonders for his time of life – tossing the tubs, and the baskets, and Grace, and even the sturdy Carrier, like fritters in a pan, while the cart leaped and plunged, and the spokes of the wheels went round too fast to be counted. Cripps tugged at Dobbin with all his might; but for the first time in his life, the old horse rebelled, and flung on at full speed.
"He knoweth best, miss; he knoweth best," cried Zacchary, while Grace clung to him; "he hath a divination of his own, if he dothn't kick the cart to tatters. But never would I turn tail on a single man – who is yon chap riding after us?"
"Oh, Cripps, it is that dreadful man," whispered Grace, with her teeth jerking into her tongue; "who has kept me in prison, and perhaps killed my father! Oh, Dobbin, sweet Dobbin, try one more gallop, and you shall have clover for ever!"
Poor Dobbin responded with his best endeavour; but, alas! his old feet, and his legs, and his breath were not as in the palmy days; and a long shambling trot, with a canter for a change, were the utmost he could compass. He wagged his grey tail, in brief expostulation, conveying that he could go no faster.
"Now for it," said Cripps, as the foe overhauled them. "I never was afeard of one man yet! and I don't mane to begin at this time of life. Missy, go down into the body of the cart. Her rideth aisily enough by now; and cover thee up with the bucking-baskets. Cripps will take thee to thy father, little un. Never fear, my deary!"
She obeyed him by jumping back into the cart – but as for hiding in a basket, Grace had a little too much of her father's spirit. The weather was so fine that no tilt was on; she sat on the rail there, and faced her bitter foe.
"That child is my ward!" shouted Mr. Sharp, riding up to the side of Cripps; while his eyes passed on from Grace's; "give her up to me this moment, fellow! I can take her by law of the land; and I will!"
"Liar Sharp," answered Master Cripps, desiring to address him professionally, "this here young lady belongeth to her father; and no man else shall have her. Any reasoning thou hast to come down with, us will hearken, as we goes along; if so be that thou keepest to a civil tongue. But high words never bate me down one penny; and never shall do so, while the Lord is with me."
"Hark you, Cripps," replied Mr. Sharp, putting his lips to the Carrier's ear; and whispering so that Grace could only guess at enormous sums of money (which sums began doubling at every breath) – "down on the nail, and no man the wiser!"