Uncle Nathan did not get fat on the bounty of his liberal nephew. He had too many corroding cares, too many financial terrors, too many fears that the banks would break, his creditors fail, his stocks depreciate, to eat and sleep like a Christian. Misers never grow liberal as they grow old, and he was no exception to the rule. A financial panic had just swept over the land, and though he had lost nothing by it, it caused him more anguish than thousands who had lost their all. He was afraid of banks, afraid of men, afraid even of good mortgages on productive real estate. He dreaded some calamity he could not define, which would wrest from him every dollar he had in the world.
To guard against this horrible event, he had actually converted some of the less reliable of his securities into gold, and concealed it in his house, preferring to sacrifice the interest to the safety of the principal, bitter as the necessity seemed to be.
For two months uncle Nathan had kept four thousand dollars in gold in the house, groaning at the loss of sixty-six and two thirds cents a day in interest; but a bank somewhere in the state had failed, and he dared not trust the money out of his own possession. It had been hidden in the cellar, hidden in the parlor, hidden in the kitchen, and hidden in his chamber; but no place seemed to be safe, and the miser trembled when awake, and trembled when asleep, in his dreams, lest the figurative description of riches should be realized, and his gold should take to itself wings and fly away.
Ruin and decay had invaded the sleeping-room of the miser, as it had every other part of his house. There was many a hole in the plastering, and many a hole in the floor; but there was one particular hole in the wall, about a foot above the floor, in a corner behind the bed. This particular hole was selected as the receptacle for the gold. He had cut away the laths, so that he could thrust his arm down into the aperture, and deposit the bag on the sill of the house.
He had begged a piece of board of Mr. Mogmore to cover this hole, and had fastened it over the plastering with four screws. While he was thus engaged, Mat Mogmore, the carpenter's son, had come for the screw-driver uncle Nathan had borrowed at the shop. Mrs. Fairfield, not knowing what her husband was doing, sent him into the chamber for it.