the funds in a stone pot, buried in his cellar, whence he dug them up and counted them every night, after saying his prayers, and just before going to bed.
It chanced that shortly after Zadoc had been installed in his new office, that he had been passing an afternoon with an old friend named Tommy Croft, who lived at Buckram. Tommy was a sturdy, weather-beaten veteran, resembling, in strength and toughness, one of the oaks of his own woods. In his youth he had been a double-jointed, hard-fisted fellow, who could cudgel it with any man of his inches. He was noted for believing in no law but what he carried in his own arm, and for doubting every one's opinion but his own; and, although a Quaker, and, of course, a hater of broils, it was whispered that he and his cudgel were sometimes at variance, and that his cudgel did not always carry out the precepts which he advocated. Be that as it may, he was a favorite with all; for he was frank, open-hearted, and never stubborn, except when he could not have his own way; and as Zadoc, though restless and persevering, was pliant, there was no collision between them—they were fast friends.
As I said before, Zadoc had been passing the afternoon with his friend, and, being tempted by Tommy's home-browed ale, to linger longer than was his wont, the two sat gossiping at the door of the house, until the setting sun warned Zadoc that it was time to turn his face homeward. So, taking his leave, he set out, and Tommy, with his cudgel under his arm, accompanied him several miles on his way. But at last the darkness, which increased as they went, rendering the road obscure, indicated to him that it was time to return, and bidding Zadoc "God speed!" he left him just as he was approaching the perilous regions of Dosoris.
Zadoc was pot-valiant just then; for at least a quart of Tommy's ale was buttoned under his jacket, distending his stomach and humming through his head, until he felt himself a match for the largest ghost that had ever made Dosoris its haunt.
The principal scourge of this lane, of late years, had been the apparition of one Derrick Wilkinson, a hard-riding horse jockey, who had broken his neck about twenty years before, and was said to patrol the lane from one end to the other, and even to waylay wayfarers,
