consarn, coals and fleeces and building, and me in it, if I were that jack fool to bide where I was. So I hollered out to he, and let ’n understand who was there, and that I marked his little game. I were on the ladder. He looked towards me, and came at me, and shook the ladder, and shook me down, and I fell on my head, I reckon, and remember nothing more till I came to myself, bound hand and foot in a sack, and throwed a-top of a heap o’ coal, that were afire and fizzing out in flame and smoke, and a’most stifled I were, and didn’t know ’xactly where I were, whether I’d got to the wrong place down below. I cried out, and I tried to get free, but couldn’t move, and then I rolled myself down over fire and coals, and scorched I were a bit; but what’d been the end I cannot tell, if it had not been for Roger Redmore, who broke open the door and came in, and dragged me out of the smoke and smother, and cut the bands and got me out o’ the sack, and helped me off to where his missis were, that is to say, my cottage.” Jason paused and looked about him. “That, I reckon, is the first chapter. Now to go on. When I came there, I thought it all over, and I got Roger to put me in the outhouse, where none of the children might see, and himself he dursn’t bide more than the night lest he should be took, but he told Jane to mind me and let me have what I wanted. Well, I turned the matter well over in my head, and I thought as how Pasco were my brother-in-law, and if all came out, I’d bring trouble on Zerah, and on my own child; I’d have to say as how Pasco had fired his own building so as to get the insurance money, and tried to kill me too, ’cause I see’d what he were up to. So I didn’t like to do that, and I thought it ’ud be best for all parties if I got out o’ the way. I dursn’t stir all the day that followed. But at night I got out when I knowed the tide was suitable, and I took the old boat at the Cellars and I made off wi’ that, and I rowed out to sea, and rowed along the coast to Torquay, and I landed there, and there I ha’ been, unbeknown to the Coombe folk’there or in London. When I’d been a bit to Torquay, I seemed to smell money. I see’d as how a lot o’ fortune could be got there by building and making a great place of it for invalids and such folk; and I went up to London to start a company, and get a building firm to take the matter up. I’ve been off and on about this idee, and a fine idee it is like to turn out’so I reckon. I did hear as how Pasco, he’d dra’ed twelve hundred pounds out o’ the insurance company. Blessed if I knowed ’xactly what I should do. On the one side, I were agent for the company; on the other, I were brother-in-law to Pasco, and if I peached on Pasco, I might just as well ha’ stuck a knife into my sister’s heart. And then I owed him something for having reared my daughter in his house since she wor a baby. And Pasco and me, us got on famous together about speculations, and taken in the lump he weren’t