Page:Poems Sherwin.djvu/53

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49

to give him some uneasiness, and he informed her that he could do nothing more in the matter unless she told him whether the person suspected by her lived in the village or at a distance from it. She very reluctantly, after much hesitation, said it might be one of the servants in her own house, but requested him not to act upon her suspicion. After again becoming grave and silent for some time, he said that he must consult his books before he could , tell anything more, and that for her to wait was useless, but if she would come to-morrow morning, he did not doubt of being able to put her in a way to recover the stolen property.

"Accordingly she departed, and returning again the following morning she found Jonathan at work at his books, where he said he had remained the whole of the night. In the course of about a quarter of an hour he told my mother that, with all his skill he could not discover the thief, but he had succeeded so far as to cause him to pass a night in extreme terror, and that if she would proceed to a certain spot which he pointed out, she would there find, in a hole under the thatch of an old out-building, the lost linen.

"The building pointed out was a detached shed, about two hundred yards from our own house; and, on arriving there, the whole of the linen my mother had lost was found concealed in a hole in the exact spot Jonathan had pointed out. It was a little tumbled, but in other respects just the same as when she laid it on the grass to air.