§ 1. I crept to the door and listened; they were snoring, so I tiptoed along and got down the stairs safely. I couldn’t hear a sound. I looked through a crack in the dining room door and saw that the men who were watching the body were all asleep in their chairs. The door of the parlour, where the corpse was lying, was open, and there was a candle in each room. I went past, but the front door was locked and the key was missing.

§ 2. Just then I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me. I silently ran into the parlour and cast my eyes about the room. The only place I could see to hide the bag was in the coffin. The lid was pushed along, showing the dead man’s face with a wet cloth over it. 1 tucked the money-bag in under the lid, just below where his hands were crossed. That sent a shiver down my spine; his hands were so cold. Then I ran back across the room and hid behind the door.

§ 3. The person coming was Mary Jane. She went to the coffin, knelt down and looked in. Then she put her handkerchief to her face and I sensed that she had started crying, although I couldn’t hear her and her back was turned. I slipped out. Looking back into the dining room, I saw that the watchers were still all asleep and I hadn’t been seen.

§ 4. As I climbed back into bed, I was a little shaken after all the risks I had just taken. I thought to myself it would be alright if it stayed where it was because when we had gone another hundred miles or two down the river I could write to Mary Jane and she c6uld dig him up and get it. But that’s not going to happen because they’ll find the money when they screw the lid on. The king will get it back and nobody else will get their hands on it again. Of course, I wanted to sneak back down and get it, but 1 didn’t dare to try. Every minute it was getting later now. Soon some of the watchers would start waking up and I might get caught  — caught with six thousand dollars in my hands. How could I explain that?