CHAPTER XVII.
CARE.
But other happy consequences soon became apparent.

If Acton in his tipsy state was mad, in his intervals of soberness he was thoroughly miserable.

And this, not merely on the score of sickness, exhaustion, prostrated spirits, blue-devils, or other the long catalogue of a drunkard's joys; not merely from a raging wife, and a wretched home; not merely from the stings, however sharp, however barbed, of a conscience ill at ease, that would rise up fiercely like a hissing snake, and strike the black apostate to the earth: these all, doubtless, had their pleasant influences, adding to the lucky finder's bliss: but there was another root of misery most unlooked for, and to the poor who dream of gold, entirely paradoxical.
The possession of that crock was the heaviest of cares.

Where on earth was he to hide it?
how to keep it safely, secretly?
What if he were robbed of it in some sly way! O, thought of utter wo! it made the fortunate possessor quiver like an aspen.

Or what, if some one or more of those blustering boon companions were to come by night with a bludgeon and a knife, and--and cut his throat, and find the treasure?
or, worse still, were to torture him, set him on the fire like a saucepan (he had heard of Turpin having done so with a rich old woman), and make him tell them "where" in his extremity of pains, and give up all, and then--and then murder him at last, outright, and afterwards burn the hovel over his head, babes and all, that none might live to tell the tale?
These fears set him on the rack, and furnished one inciting cause to that uninterrupted orgie; he must be either mad or miserable, this lucky finder.
Also, even in his tipsy state, he could not cast off care: he might in his cups reveal the dangerous secret of having found a crock of gold.