"Deth, alas, ne will not han my lif; Thus walke I like a resteles caitif, And on the ground, which is my modres gate, I knocke with my staf erlich and late And say to hire 'Leve moder, let me in.'" "Where is this Death of whom you have spoken?" furiously demand the three young men. The old man replied, "You will find him under an oak tree in yonder grove." The three rush forward; and upon arriving at the oak find three bags full of gold coin. Overjoyed at their good fortune they are afraid to carry the treasure into town by day lest they be suspected of robbery. They therefore resolve to wait until night and in the meantime to make merry. For the latter purpose one of the three goes to town after food and drink. As soon as he is out of hearing, the two who remain under the tree resolve to murder their companion on his return so that they may be the richer by his portion of the treasure; he, on the other hand, whilst buying his victual in town, shrewdly drops a great lump of poison into the bottle of drink he is to carry back so that his companions may perish and he take all. To make a long story short, the whole plot is carried out. As soon as he who was sent to town returns, his companions fall upon him and murder him; they then proceed merrily to eat and drink what he has brought; the poison does its work; presently all three lie dead under the oak tree by the side of the gold, and the old man's direction has come true, and they _have_ found death under that tree. In George Eliot's story the young English Squire also finds death in finding gold. You will all remember how Dunstan Cass in returning late at night from a fox-hunt on foot--for he had killed his horse in the chase--finds himself near the stone hut where Silas Marner the weaver has long plied his trade, and where he is known to have concealed a large sum in gold. The young man is extraordinarily pressed for money; he resolves to take Marner's gold; the night is dark and misty; he makes his way through the mud and darkness to the cottage and finds the door open, Marner being, by the rarest of accidents, away from the hut. The young man quickly discovers the spot in the floor where the weaver kept his gold; he seizes the two heavy leathern bags filled with guineas; and the chapter ends. "So he stepped forward into the darkness." All this occurs in Chapter IV. The story then proceeds; nothing more is heard of Dunstan Cass in the village for many years; the noise of the robbery has long ago died away; Silas Marner has one day found a golden head of hair lying on the very spot of his floor where he used to finger his own gold; the little outcast who had fallen asleep with her head in this position, after having wandered into Marner's cottage, has been brought up by him to womanhood; when one day, at a critical period in Silas Marner's existence, it happens that in draining some lower grounds the pit of an old stone quarry,