Nothing could be easier, then, than for David on this Sunday afternoon to decline going to church, on the ground that he was going to tea at Mr. Lunn’s, whose pretty daughter Sally had been an early flame of his, and, when the church-goers were at a safe distance, to abstract the guineas from their wooden box and slip them into a small canvas bag—nothing easier than to call to the cowboy that he was going, and tell him to keep an eye on the house for fear of Sunday tramps.  David thought it would be easy, too, to get to a small thicket and bury his bag in a hole he had already made and covered up under the roots of an old hollow ash, and he had, in fact, found the hole without a moment’s difficulty, had uncovered it, and was about gently to drop the bag into it, when the sound of a large body rustling towards him with something like a bellow was such a surprise to David, who, as a gentleman gifted with much contrivance, was naturally only prepared for what he expected, that instead of dropping the bag gently he let it fall so as to make it untwist and vomit forth the shining guineas.  In the same moment he looked up and saw his dear brother Jacob close upon him, holding the pitchfork so that the bright smooth prongs were a yard in advance of his own body, and about a foot off David’s.  (A learned friend, to whom I once narrated this history, observed that it was David’s guilt which made these prongs formidable, and that the “mens nil conscia sibi” strips a pitchfork of all terrors.  I thought this idea so valuable, that I obtained his leave to use it on condition of suppressing his name.)  Nevertheless, David did not entirely lose his presence of mind; for in that case he would have sunk on the earth or started backward; whereas he kept his ground and smiled at Jacob, who nodded his head up and down, and said, “Hoich, Zavy!” in a painfully equivocal manner.  David’s heart was beating audibly, and if he had had any lips they would have been pale; but his mental activity, instead of being paralysed, was stimulated.  While he was inwardly praying (he always prayed when he was much frightened)—“Oh, save me this once, and I’ll never get into danger again!”—he was thrusting his hand into his pocket in search of a box of yellow lozenges, which he had brought with him from Brigford among other delicacies of the same portable kind, as a means of conciliating proud beauty, and more particularly the beauty of Miss Sarah Lunn.  Not one of these delicacies had he ever offered to poor Jacob, for David was not a young man to waste his jujubes and barley-sugar in giving pleasure to people from whom he expected nothing.  But an idiot with equivocal intentions and a pitchfork is as well worth flattering and cajoling as if he were Louis Napoleon.  So David, with a promptitude equal to the occasion, drew out his box of yellow lozenges, lifted the lid, and performed a pantomime with his mouth and fingers, which was meant to imply that he was delighted to see his dear brother Jacob, and seized the opportunity of making him a small present, which he would find particularly agreeable to the taste.  Jacob, you understand, was not an intense idiot, but within a certain limited range knew how to choose the good and reject the evil: he took one lozenge, by way of test, and sucked it as if he had been a philosopher; then, in as great an ecstacy at its new and complex savour as Caliban at the taste of Trinculo’s wine, chuckled and stroked this suddenly beneficent brother, and held out his hand for more; for, except in fits of anger, Jacob was not ferocious or needlessly predatory.  David’s courage half returned, and he left off praying; pouring a dozen lozenges into Jacob’s palm, and trying to look very fond of him.  He congratulated himself that he had formed the plan of going to see Miss Sally Lunn this afternoon, and that, as a consequence, he had brought with him these propitiatory delicacies: he was certainly a lucky fellow; indeed, it was always likely Providence should be fonder of him than of other apprentices, and since he was to be interrupted, why, an idiot was preferable to any other sort of witness.  For the first time in his life, David thought he saw the advantage of idiots.

As for Jacob, he had thrust his pitchfork into the ground, and had thrown himself down beside it, in thorough abandonment to the unprecedented pleasure of having five lozenges in his mouth at once, blinking meanwhile, and making inarticulate sounds of gustative content.  He had not yet given any sign of noticing the guineas, but in seating himself he had laid his broad right hand on them, and unconsciously kept it in that position, absorbed in the sensations of his palate.  If he could only be kept so occupied with the lozenges as not to see the guineas before David could manage to cover them!  That was David’s best hope of safety; for Jacob knew his mother’s guineas; it had been part of their common experience as boys to be allowed to look at these handsome coins, and rattle them in their box on high days and holidays, and among all Jacob’s narrow experiences as to money, this was likely to be the most memorable.

“Here, Jacob,” said David, in an insinuating tone, handing the box to him, “I’ll give ’em all to you.  Run!—make haste!—else somebody’ll come and take ’em.”

David, not having studied the psychology of idiots, was not aware that they are not to be wrought upon by imaginative fears.  Jacob took the box with his left hand, but saw no necessity for running away.  Was ever a promising young man wishing to lay the foundation of his fortune by appropriating his mother’s guineas obstructed by such a day-mare as this?  But the moment must come when Jacob would move his right hand to draw off the lid of the tin box, and then David would sweep the guineas into the hole with the utmost address and swiftness, and immediately seat himself upon them.  Ah, no!  It’s of no use to have foresight when you are dealing with an idiot: he is not to be calculated upon.  Jacob’s right hand was given to vague clutching and throwing; it suddenly clutched the guineas as if they had been so many pebbles, and was raised in an attitude which promised to scatter them like seed over a distant bramble, when, from some prompting or other—probably of an unwonted sensation—it paused, descended to Jacob’s knee, and opened slowly under the inspection of Jacob’s dull eyes.  David began to pray again, but immediately desisted—another resource having occurred to him.

“Mother! zinnies!” exclaimed the innocent Jacob.  Then, looking at David, he said, interrogatively, “Box?”

“Hush! hush!” said David, summoning all his ingenuity in this severe strait.  “See, Jacob!”  He took the tin box from his brother’s hand, and emptied it of the lozenges, returning half of them to Jacob, but secretly keeping the rest in his own hand.  Then he held out the empty box, and said, “Here’s the box, Jacob!  The box for the guineas!” gently sweeping them from Jacob’s palm into the box.

This procedure was not objectionable to Jacob; on the contrary, the guineas clinked so pleasantly as they fell, that he wished for a repetition of the sound, and seizing the box, began to rattle it very gleefully.  David, seizing the opportunity, deposited his reserve of lozenges in the ground and hastily swept some earth over them.  “Look, Jacob!” he said, at last.  Jacob paused from his clinking, and looked into the hole, while David began to scratch away the earth, as if in doubtful expectation.  When the lozenges were laid bare, he took them out one by one, and gave them to Jacob.  “Hush!” he said, in a loud whisper, “Tell nobody—all for Jacob—hush—sh—sh!  Put guineas in the hole—they’ll come out like this!”  To make the lesson more complete, he took a guinea, and lowering it into the hole, said, “Put in so.”  Then, as he took the last lozenge out, he said, “Come out so,” and put the lozenge into Jacob’s hospitable mouth.

Jacob turned his head on one side, looked first at his brother and then at the hole, like a reflective monkey, and, finally, laid the box of guineas in the hole with much decision.  David made haste to add every one of the stray coins, put on the lid, and covered it well with earth, saying in his meet coaxing tone—

“Take ’m out to-morrow, Jacob; all for Jacob!  Hush—sh—sh!”

Jacob, to whom this once indifferent brother had all at once become a sort of sweet-tasted fetish, stroked David’s best coat with his adhesive fingers, and then hugged him with an accompaniment of that mingled chuckling and gurgling by which he was accustomed to express the milder passions.  But if he had chosen to bite a small morsel out of his beneficent brother’s cheek, David would have been obliged to bear it.

And here I must pause, to point out to you the short-sightedness of human contrivance.  This ingenious young man, Mr. David Faux, thought he had achieved a triumph of cunning when he had associated himself in his brother’s rudimentary mind with the flavour of yellow lozenges.  But he had yet to learn that it is a dreadful thing to make an idiot fond of you, when you yourself are not of an affectionate disposition: especially an idiot with a pitchfork—obviously a difficult friend to shake off by rough usage.

It may seem to you rather a blundering contrivance for a clever young man to bury the guineas.  But, if everything had turned out as David had calculated, you would have seen that his plan was worthy of his talents.  The guineas would have lain safely in the earth while the theft was discovered, and David, with the calm of conscious innocence, would have lingered at home, reluctant to say good-bye to his dear mother while she was in grief about her guineas; till at length, on the eve of his departure, he would have disinterred them in the strictest privacy, and carried them on his own person without inconvenience.  But David, you perceive, had reckoned without his host, or, to speak more precisely, without his idiot brother—an item of so uncertain and fluctuating a character, that I doubt whether he would not have puzzled the astute heroes of M. de Balzac, whose foresight is so remarkably at home in the future.

It was clear to David now that he had only one alternative before him: he must either renounce the guineas, by quietly putting them back in his mother’s drawer (a course not unattended with difficulty); or he must leave more than a suspicion behind him, by departing early the next morning without giving notice, and with the guineas in his pocket.  For if he gave notice that he was going, his mother, he knew, would insist on fetching from her box of guineas the three she had always promised him as his share; indeed, in his original plan, he had counted on this as a means by which the theft would be discovered under circumstances that would themselves speak for his innocence; but now, as I need hardly explain, that well-combined plan was completely frustrated.  Even if David could have bribed Jacob with perpetual lozenges, an idiot’s secrecy is itself betrayal.  He dared not even go to tea at Mr. Lunn’s, for in that case he would have lost sight of Jacob, who, in his impatience for the crop of lozenges, might scratch up the box again while he was absent, and carry it home—depriving him at once of reputation and guineas.  No! he must think of nothing all the rest of this day, but of coaxing Jacob and keeping him out of mischief.  It was a fatiguing and anxious evening to David; nevertheless, he dared not go to sleep without tying a piece of string to his thumb and great toe, to secure his frequent waking; for he meant to be up with the first peep of dawn, and be far out of reach before breakfast-time.  His father, he thought, would certainly cut him off with a shilling; but what then?  Such a striking young man as he would be sure to be well received in the West Indies: in foreign countries there are always openings—even for cats.  It was probable that some Princess Yarico would want him to marry her, and make him presents of very large jewels beforehand; after which, he needn’t marry her unless he liked.  David had made up his mind not to steal any more, even from people who were fond of him: it was an unpleasant way of making your fortune in a world where you were likely to surprised in the act by brothers.  Such alarms did not agree with David’s constitution, and he had felt so much nausea this evening that no doubt his liver was affected.  Besides, he would have been greatly hurt not to be thought well of in the world: he always meant to make a figure, and be thought worthy of the best seats and the best morsels.

Ruminating to this effect on the brilliant future in reserve for him, David by the help of his check-string kept himself on the alert to seize the time of earliest dawn for his rising and departure.  His brothers, of course, were early risers, but he should anticipate them by at least an hour and a half, and the little room which he had to himself as only an occasional visitor, had its window over the horse-block, so that he could slip out through the window without the least difficulty.  Jacob, the horrible Jacob, had an awkward trick of getting up before everybody else, to stem his hunger by emptying the milk-bowl that was “duly set” for him; but of late he had taken to sleeping in the hay-loft, and if he came into the house, it would be on the opposite side to that from which David was making his exit.  There was no need to think of Jacob; yet David was liberal enough to bestow a curse on him—it was the only thing he ever did bestow gratuitously.  His small bundle of clothes was ready packed, and he was soon treading lightly on the steps of the horse-block, soon walking at a smart pace across the fields towards the thicket.  It would take him no more than two minutes to get out the box; he could make out the tree it was under by the pale strip where the bark was off, although the dawning light was rather dimmer in the thicket.  But what, in the name of—burnt pastry—was that large body with a staff planted beside it, close at the foot of the ash-tree?  David paused, not to make up his mind as to the nature of the apparition—he had not the happiness of doubting for a moment that the staff was Jacob’s pitchfork—but to gather the self-command necessary for addressing his brother with a sufficiently honeyed accent.  Jacob was absorbed in scratching up the earth, and had not heard David’s approach.