for, like everyone of low mental organisation, he was grasping and keen to drive a bargain. But when he had the money she knew that less confidence could be reposed on him. He could think of but one thing at a time, and if he fell into company, his mind would be occupied by his jug of beer, his bread and cheese, or his companion. He would not have attention at command for anything beside.
The rustic brain has neither agility nor flexibility. It cannot shift its focus nor change its point of sight. The educated mind will peer through a needlehole in a sheet of paper, and see through it the entire horizon and all the sky. The uncultured mind perceives nothing but a hole, a hole everywhere without bottom, to be recoiled from, not sounded. When the oyster spat falls on mud in a tidal estuary, it gets buried in mud deeper with every tide, two films each twenty-four hours, and becomes a fossil if it becomes anything. Mind in the rustic is like oyster spat, unformed, the protoplasm of mind but not mind itself, daily, annually deeper buried in the mud of coarse routine. It never thinks, it scarce lives, and dies in unconsciousness that it ever possessed life.
Mehalah sat considering, her mother by her, with anxious eyes fastened on her daughter's face.
The money must have been abstracted either in Colchester or on the way home. The old man had said that he stopped and tarried at the Rose Inn on the way. Had the theft been there committed? Who had been his associates in that tavern?
"Mother," said Mehalah suddenly, "has the canvas bag been on the table untouched since Abraham brought it here?"
"To be sure it has."
"You have been in the room, in your seat all the while?"
"Of course I have. There was no one here but Rebow. You do not suspect him, do you?
Mehalah shook her head.
"No, I have no reason to do so. You were here all the while?"
"Yes."
Mehalah dropped her brow again on her hands. What
