Hewer and I did all alone
with several pails of water and besoms at last wash the dirt off
the pieces, and parted the pieces and the dirt, and then began to
tell them by a note which I had of the value of the whole (in my
pocket.) And do find that there was short above a hundred
pieces: which did make me mad; and considering that the
neighbour's house was so near that we could not possibly speak
one to another in the garden at that place where the gold lay
(especially my father being deaf) but they must know what we had
been doing, I feared that they might in the night come and gather
some pieces and prevent us the next morning; so W. Hewer and I
out again about midnight (for it was now grown so late) and there
by candle-light did make shift to gather forty-five pieces more.
And so in and to cleanse them: and by this time it was past two
in the morning; and so to bed, and there lay in some disquiet all
night telling of the clock till it was day-light.
11th. And then W. Hewer and I, with pails and a sieve, did lock
ourselves into the garden, and there gather all the earth about
the place into pails, and then sift those pails in one of the
summer-houses (just as they do for dyamonds in other parts of the
world); and there to our great content did by nine o'clock make
the last night's forty-five up seventy-nine: so that we are come
to about twenty or thirty of what I think the true number should
be.
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