"I should like to know what has put the thought in your head?" contended Sam. "You had better put it out again. I've never told you I was falling in love with her; or told herself, either. Mrs. Parslet would be about me, I expect, if I did. She looks after her as one looks after gold." "Well, I found you in their room, having tea with them, and----" "It was quite an accident; an exceptional thing," interrupted Sam. "Well," repeated Austin, "you need not put your back up, old fellow; a friendly warning does no harm. Talking of gold, Dene, I've done my best to get up the twenty pounds you wanted to borrow of me, and I can't do it. I'd let you have it with all my heart if I could; but I find I am harder up than I thought for." Which was all true. Chance was as good-natured a young man as ever lived, but at this early stage of his life he made more debts than he could pay. "Badger has just been here, whining and covertly threatening," said Sam. "I am to pay up in a week, or he'll make me pay--and tell my uncle, he says, to begin with." "Hypocritical old skinflint!" ejaculated Chance, himself sometimes in the hands of Mr. Badger--a worthy gentleman who did a little benevolent usury in a small and quiet way, and took his delight in accommodating safe young men. A story was whispered that young M., desperately hard-up, borrowed two pounds from him one Saturday night, undertaking to repay it, with two pounds added on for interest, that day month; and when the day came and M. had not got the money, or was at all likely to get it, he carried off a lot of his mother's plate under his coat to the pawnbroker's. "And there's more besides Badger's that is pressing," went on Dene. "I must get money from somewhere, or it will play the very deuce with me. I wonder whether Charley Hill could lend me any?" "Don't much think so. You might ask him. Money seems scarce with Hill always. Has a good many ways for it, I fancy." "Talking of money, Chance, a lot has been found at Cockermuth's to-day. A boxful of guineas that has been lost for years." Austin Chance stared. "You don't mean that box of guineas that mysteriously disappeared in Philip's time?" "Well, they say so. It is a small, round box of carved ebony, and it is stuffed to the brim with old guineas. Sixty of them, I hear." "I can't believe it's true; that _that's_ found." "Not believe it's true, Chance! Why, I saw it. Saw the box found, and touched the guineas with my fingers. It has been hidden in an old bureau all the time," added Sam, and he related the particulars of the discovery. "What an extraordinary thing!" exclaimed young Chance: "the queerest start I ever heard of." And he fell to musing. But the "queer start," as Mr. Austin Chance was pleased to designate the resuscitation of the box, did not prove to be a lucky one. II.