Page:Life of Daniel Dancer Esq..pdf/3

 dotes have been handed down concerning him. But Daniel was satisfied that his father had concealed money to the amount of more than one thousand five hundred pounds in the premises occupied by him; and this occasioned no little uneasiness; but it did not proceed from the fear of its not being discovered, but from the dread least his brothers might find it, and not deliver it to him. This rendered him cautious of mentioning his suspicions; and it was full two years before any part of it was found. At length, on removing an old gate, about two hundred pounds in gold and bank notes, which had been concealed between two pewter dishes under one of the posts, were fortunately disinterred. The rest was never heard of.

It was in the paternal mansion at Astmiss, at Causeway-gate, on Harrow Weald Common, that Daniel was doomed by the fates to spend the whole of his life, which seems to have been one uninterrupted dreary blank.—His wretched habitation was surrounded by about eighty acres of his own rich meadow land, with some of the finest oak timber in the kingdom upon it; and he possessed an adjoining farm, called Waldos; the whole of the annual value of about two hundred and fifty pounds per annum, if properly cultivated. But cultivation was so expensive, and so Daniel permitted grass only to grow