“Mr. Pipkin,” said Mrs. Pipkin, with biting severity, pointing at the door, “will you oblige me?”
And Mr. Pipkin obliged her, chuckling as he went.
Jack sat milking a cow, with his head pressed against her flank, looking down into the pail, in which the bright streams were dancing, when Phin came into the yard.
“Say, Jack!” cried that perfidious youngster, “wasn’t it too bad, though, for you to be robbed of all that money?” although Phin’s private sentiment was that it was a capital joke. “And what do you think I overheard just now? Mrs. Pip said if she was you she would get hold of it again somehow; and father said you would have a right to take it anywhere, if you could lay hands on it; he didn’t know but ’t would be _justifiable_,—that was his word.”
“That’s all the good words do; for how can I get it?” said Jack, who, having, in his imagination, again and again, by some desperate act, overthrown his enemy and regained his lost treasure, would have been glad enough to know how his wild thoughts could be successfully reduced to practice.
He was still nourishing in his excited mind these fiery fancies, when, the milking over, he went to walk in the orchard; having all sorts of fearful adventures with the gaunt old Peternot, and always coming off triumphant with his treasure. Now he hurled him down his own cellar-way, and buttoned the door. Now he caught him, and, single-handed, tied him with a clothes-line, drawing it dreadfully tight, in the hardest kind of hard knots, and left him bound to a bed-post. Then the squire fell dead in a fit,—a judgment upon him for his wickedness,—just as he was lifting the money into his wagon in order to carry it away and sell it. Or Lion took the old man down and held him while his young master bore off the coin. Jack got the treasure in every instance,—only to wake up at last, and find that all his dreams of what he might do left him still hopelessly wronged and baffled.
He passed on through the orchard, and unconsciously drew near the scene of the afternoon’s conflict. That had still a strange attraction for him; he must once more view the spot where his hopes of fortune had been raised so high, to be followed so soon by impotent rage and despair.