"Jacob," she said, "you ought to be in bed; why are you up like that? It's three o'clock in the morning." He began to talk very rapidly. He knew his mother perfectly well. "Mother," he said, "when bailiffs comes you willn't tell 'em where I have hid my brass; see, I've hidden it here, but you willn't tell 'em, mother?" And then he lifted up a corner of the carpet and showed his little purse. Mrs. Ogden trembled from head to foot. "Our Jacob's crazed," she said to herself--"our Jacob's gone crazed!" She felt too weak to remain standing, and sat down, never taking her eyes off him. He put the purse back, and covered it again with great care. Then he took his memorandum-book, and seemed to be making an entry. "Let me look at that book," Mrs. Ogden said. It was as she had feared. The entry was a hopelessly illegible jumble of unmeaning lines and figures. "Hadn't you better go to bed?" "Go to bed, mother--not if I know it!" He said this with a smile of intense cunning, and then added, confidentially, "The bailiffs are comin' to-morrow, and Baron Rothschild has bought all my property, a large price, a million sterling--a million sterling; it's Baron Rothschild that bought it, mother, for a million sterling!" The poor old woman burst into tears. "O Jacob!" she said, "I wish you wouldn't talk so!" "Why, mother," he replied, with an injured air, and a look of intense penetration, "you know well enough what I failed for. I never should have failed if it hadn't been for that Sootythorn Bank; but they came to borrow money of me at Milend, and I took up shares for a hundred thousand, and then the smash came, and I failed. But never you mind, mother. Baron Rothschild bought my estates for a million sterling. That shows I was a millionnaire. Doesn't it, mother? for if I hadn't been worth a million, Baron Rothschild wouldn't have given a million for my property. He willn't give more for property than what it's worth." "O Jacob! you do make me miserable with talking so." She did not know what to do with him. Young Jacob and her son Isaac were both at Twistle Farm. At last she thought of Colonel Stanburne, who was staying at Wenderholme Cottage. She left her son for a few minutes, and sent a messenger for the Colonel. On returning to Jacob's room, she found him busy counting his money over again. He had taken the purse from its hiding-place. The strength of her own nervous system was such that she bore even this appalling event with firmness. She was grieved beyond power of expression, but she was not overcome. Happily there was no violence in Jacob Ogden's madness; he was not in the least dangerous. He simply kept repeating that story about his supposed failure, which he always attributed to the Sootythorn Bank, and the purchase of his property by Baron Rothschild. When the Colonel came, he told him the same story in the same words.