The heaviest fish, look you, always lie among the sedge, hereabouts and thereabouts, and needs stirring, as your Tom knows well; so I chucked the gallipots fur from me, right and left, into the shallows, and thereby druv the pike upon my hooks.

A good night's work I made of it too, say nothing of the Savings-bank; forty pound o' pike and twelve of eel warn't bad pickings." "Dear, it was a pity though to fling away the honey; but what became of the shawl, Ben ?" Perhaps Mrs.Acton thought of looking for it.
"Oh, as for that, I was minded to have sunk it, with its mess of sweet-meats and potsherds; but a thought took me, dame, to be 'conomical for once: and I was half sorry too that I'd flung away the jars, for I began to fancy your little uns might ha' liked the stuff; so I dipped the clout like any washerwoman, rinshed, and squeezed, and washed the mess away, and have worn it round my waist ever since; here, dame, I haven't been this way for a while afore to-night; but I meant to ask you if you'd like to have it; may be 'tan't the fashion though." "Good gracious, Ben! why that's Mrs.Quarles's shawl, I'd swear to it among a hundred; Sarah Stack, at the Hall, once took and wore it, when Mrs.Quarles was ill a-bed, and she and our Thomas walked to church together.

Yes--green, edged with red, and--I thought so--a yellow circle in the middle; here's B.Q., for Bridget Quarles, in black cotton at the corner.

Lackapity! if they'd heard of all this at the Inquest! I tell you what, Big Ben, it's kindly meant of you, and so thank you heartily, but that shawl would bring us into trouble; so please take it yourself to the Hall, and tell 'em fairly how you came by it." "I don't know about that Poll Acton; perhaps they might ask me for the Saving-bank, too--eh, Roger!" "No, no, wife; no, it'll never do to lose the money! let a bygone be a bygone, and don't disturb the old woman in her grave.

As to the shawl, if it's like to be a tell-tale, in my mind, this hearth's the safest place for it." So he flung it on the fire; there was a shrivelling, smouldering, guilty sort of blaze, and the shawl was burnt.
Roger Acton, you are falling quickly as a shooting star; already is your conscience warped to connive, for lucre's sake, at some one's secret crimes.