"You'd best fodder the cow, Ruth, and then we'll have tea--the lads will be sharp set. Can you manage to cut the ham, or shall I help you?" But Jim declared that if there was one thing he could do better than another in this world it was to water and fodder a cow, bed her down, and muck out a shippon and as for cutting ham, he had missed his vocation in not being 'prenticed to a butcher. So Ruth tripped off to the kitchen, Jim, bending his broad shoulders to avoid banging his head as he passed through the low doorway, lumbering in her wake like a man-o'-war convoyed by a saucy frigate. My father settled himself with a sigh of satisfaction in his easy chair, took his churchwarden from the mantelpiece, emptied the remainder of the beer into his pint pot, lit his pipe of "old Women's baccy," as shag was called in those days, and prepared to listen to my usual budget of the doings at Wrigley Mill during the last while back, casting curious and inquiring looks at the heavy box I had placed upon the table. "I've a strange tale to tell, father," I began. "And fain I am to be at home and have your counsel and assistance. You knew Mr. Turner, the hermit of Stanedge Moor, as they called him?" "I rather knew of him than knew him. I came across him at times in my journeyings and would fain have communed with him, but he held aloof. A lone man, and I fear an unhappy man--but it was not for me to force myself upon him. Well, what of him?" "He's dead, and he's committed that box to my keeping." And then I told my tale. "Now, what's to be done, father? Four hundred pound and more's a sight of money. You'll have to look after that. I can't keep it at Wrigley Mill, that's certain sure. Mary would go off her head if she knew it was in the house, and I'd be dreaming of burglars and cutthroats till my nights were a burden to me." "This is a heavy matter Abel, my son--one to be pondered over nor determined lightly, to be taken to the Lord in Prayer. But one thing is borne in upon me, a thought that comes to me from the Book of Books, that well of wisdom--you must not do after the manner of that wicked and slothful servant to whom his lord said, 'Thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers and then at my coming I should have received my own with usury.' This lucre must to the bank that it increase and fructify till such time as the woman and her child be found." "That's plain as a pikestaff," I agreed. "But what can I do to find them? It seems to me Mr. Garside did all a man could do at the time, and after all those years…."