On the morning of the 9th he wrote to his sister, and then arraying
himself in his new wedding suit, and putting the emerald ring on his
finger, he appeared all impatience, until toward evening, when he
sallied out on horseback to his appointment. It seems that his
mysterious inamorata had met him, for he was seen riding through the
big town before sunset, with a young lady behind him, dressed in white
and green, and the villagers affirmed that they were riding at the
rate of fifty miles an hour! They were seen to pass a cottage called
Mosskilt, ten miles farther on, where there was no highway, at the
same tremendous speed; and I could never hear that they were any more
seen, until the following morning, when Birkendelly's fine bay horse
was found lying dead at his own stable door; and shortly after his
master was likewise discovered lying, a blackened corpse, on the Birky
Brow at the very spot where the mysterious but lovely dame had always
appeared to him. There was neither wound, bruise, nor dislocation in
his whole frame; but his skin was of a livid color, and his features
terribly distorted.

This woful catastrophe struck the neighborhood with great
consternation, so that nothing else was talked of. Every ancient
tradition and modern incident were raked together, compared, and
combined; and certainly a most rare concatenation of misfortunes was
elicited. It was authenticated that his father had died on the same
spot that day twenty years, and his grandfather that day forty years,
the former, as was supposed, by a fall from his horse when in liquor,
and the latter, nobody knew how; and now this Allan was the last of
his race, for Mrs. Bryan had no children.

It was, moreover, now remembered by many, and among the rest by the
Rev. Joseph Taylor, that he had frequently observed a young lady, in
white and green, sauntering about the spot on a St. Lawrence's Eve.

When Captain Bryan and his lady arrived to take possession of the
premises, they instituted a strict inquiry into every circumstance;
but nothing further than what was related to them by Mr. M'Murdie
could be learned of this Mysterious Bride, besides what the Laird's
own letter bore. It ran thus:

"DEAREST SISTER,--I shall before this time to-morrow be the most
happy, or most miserable, of mankind, having solemnly engaged myself
this night to wed a young and beautiful lady, named Jane Ogilvie, to
whom it seems I was betrothed before I was born. Our correspondence
has been of a most private and mysterious nature; but my troth is
pledged, and my resolution fixed. We set out on a far journey to the
place of her abode on the nuptial eve, so that it will be long before
I see you again. Yours till death,

"ALLAN GEORGE SANDISON.

"BIRKENDELLY, _August 8_, 1781."

That very same year, an old woman, named Marion Haw, was returned upon
that, her native parish, from Glasgow. She had led a migratory life
with her son--who was what he called a bell-hanger, but in fact a
tinker of the worst grade--for many years, and was at last returned
to the muckle town in a state of great destitution. She gave the
parishioners a history of the Mysterious Bride, so plausibly correct,
but withal so romantic, that everybody said of it (as is often said of
my narratives, with the same narrow-minded prejudice and injustice)
that it was a _made story_. There were, however, some strong
testimonies of its veracity.

She said the first Allan Sandison, who married the great heiress of
Birkendelly, was previously engaged to a beautiful young lady named
Jane Ogilvie, to whom he gave anything but fair play; and, as she
believed, either murdered her, or caused her to be murdered, in the
midst of a thicket of birch and broom, at a spot which she mentioned;
and she had good reason for believing so, as she had seen the red
blood and the new grave, when she was a little girl, and ran home and
mentioned it to her grandfather, who charged her as she valued her
life never to mention that again, as it was only the nombles and hide
of a deer which he himself had buried there. But when, twenty years
subsequent to that, the wicked and unhappy Allan Sandison was found
dead on that very spot, and lying across the green mound, then nearly
level with the surface, which she had once seen a new grave, she then
for the first time ever thought of a Divine Providence; and she added,
"For my grandfather, Neddy Haw, he dee'd too; there's naebody kens
how, nor ever shall."

As they were quite incapable of conceiving from Marion's description
anything of the spot, Mr. M'Murdie caused her to be taken out to the
Birky Brow in a cart, accompanied by Mr. Taylor and some hundreds of
the town's folks; but whenever she saw it, she said, "Aha, birkies!
the haill kintra's altered now. There was nae road here then; it gaed
straight ower the tap o' the hill. An' let me see--there's the thorn
where the cushats biggit; an' there's the auld birk that I ance fell
aff an' left my shoe sticking i' the cleft. I can tell ye, birkies,
either the deer's grave or bonny Jane Ogilvie's is no twa yards aff
the place where that horse's hind-feet are standin'; sae ye may howk,
an' see if there be ony remains."

The minister and M'Murdie and all the people stared at one another,
for they had purposely caused the horse to stand still on the very
spot where both the father and son had been found dead. They digged,
and deep, deep below the road they found part of the slender bones
and skull of a young female, which they deposited decently in the
church-yard. The family of the Sandisons is extinct, the Mysterious
Bride appears no more on the Eve of St. Lawrence, and the wicked
people of the great muckle village have got a lesson on divine justice
written to them in lines of blood.




THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER [1]

[Footnote 1: From _The Money-diggers_.]

_Washington Irving_ (1783-1859)


A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet
winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles
Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp or morass. On one side
of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land
rises abruptly from the water's edge into a high ridge, on which grow
a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these
gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of
treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to
bring the money in a boat secretly, and at night, to the very foot of
the hill; the elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be
kept that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good
landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old
stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the
money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known,
he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been
ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his
wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and
there hanged for a pirate.

About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent
in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees,
there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of
Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly
that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could
lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the
alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying
about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the
conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common
property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone and
had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of
sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no
traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as
articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, where
a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of
pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he
would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by,
and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.

The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a
tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm.
Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his
face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to
words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The
lonely wayfarer shrank within himself at the horrid clamor and
clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his
way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.

One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the
neighborhood, he took what he considered a short-cut homeward, through
the swamp. Like most short-cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp
was thickly grown with great, gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them
ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday and a retreat for
all the owls of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires,
partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often
betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering mud; there
were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the
bull-frog, and the water-snake, where the trunks of pines and hemlocks
lay half-drowned, half-rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in
the mire.

Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous
forest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded
precarious footholds among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a
cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by
the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck,
rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a
firm piece of ground, which ran like a peninsula into the deep bosom
of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during
their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of
fort, which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used
as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained
of the old Indian fort but a few embankments, gradually sinking to the
level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks
and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the
dark pines and hemlocks of the swamps.

It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old
fort, and he paused there awhile to rest himself. Any one but he would
have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for
the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed
down from the times of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the
savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the Evil Spirit.

Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of
the kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen
hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toad, and delving
with his walking-staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he
turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something
hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull,
with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on
the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had
been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had
taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.

"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave it a kick to shake the dirt from
it.

"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes and
beheld a great black man seated directly opposite him, on the stump of
a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither heard nor seen
any one approach; and he was still more perplexed on observing, as
well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was
neither negro nor Indian. It is true he was dressed in a rude Indian
garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body; but his
face was neither black nor copper-color, but swarthy and dingy, and
begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires
and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from
his head in all directions, and bore an axe on his shoulder.

He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.

"What are you doing on my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse,
growling voice.

"Your grounds!" said Tom, with a sneer; "no more your grounds than
mine; they belong to Deacon Peabody."

"Deacon Peabody be damned," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself he
will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to those of
his neighbors. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."

Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one
of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the
core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first
high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was
scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man who had waxed
wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked
around, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some
great man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe. The
one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been
hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty
rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it
was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.

"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of
triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for
winter."

"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's
timber?"

"The right of a prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged
to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon the
soil."

"And, pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?" said Tom.

"Oh, I go by various names. I am the wild huntsman in some countries;
the black miner in others. In this neighborhood I am known by the name
of the black woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated this
spot, and in honor of whom they now and then roasted a white man,
by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been
exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the
persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists; I am the great patron and
prompter of slave-dealers and the grand-master of the Salem witches."

"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," said Tom,
sturdily, "you are he commonly called Old Scratch."

"The same, at your service!" replied the black man, with a half-civil
nod.

Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story;
though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would
think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild, lonely
place would have shaken any man's nerves; but Tom was a hard-minded
fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant
wife that he did not even fear the devil.

It is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest
conversation together, as Tom returned homeward. The black man told
him of great sums of money buried by Kidd the pirate under the
oak-trees on the high ridge, not far from the morass. All these were
under his command, and protected by his power, so that none could find
them but such as propitiated his favor. These he offered to place
within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for
him; but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What these
conditions were may be easily surmised, though Tom never disclosed
them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to
think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles when money was
in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp, the stranger
paused. "What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?"
said Tom. "There's my signature," said the black man, pressing his
finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets
of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into
the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and
so on, until he totally disappeared.

When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burned, as
it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.

The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of
Absalom Crowninshield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the
papers, with the usual flourish, that "A great man had fallen in
Israel."

Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down,
and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom;
"who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was
no illusion.

He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was
an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was
awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to
comply with the black man's terms, and secure what would make them
wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself
to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so
he flatly refused, out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and
bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject; but the more she
talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her.

At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and,
if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself. Being of the same
fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort
toward the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. When
she came back, she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke
something of a black man, whom she had met about twilight hewing at
the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to
terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it
was she forbore to say.

The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron
heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain; midnight
came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night
returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her
safety, especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the
silver tea-pot and spoons, and every portable article of value.
Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word,
she was never heard of more.

What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many
pretending to know. It is one of those facts which have become
confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her
way among the tangled mazes of the swamp, and sank into some pit or
slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the
household booty, and made off to some other province; while others
surmised that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on
the top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it
was said a great black man, with an axe on his shoulder, was seen late
that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a
check apron, with an air of surly triumph.

The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom Walker
grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he
set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long
summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was
to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere to be
heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming
by; or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a neighboring pool. At
length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls
began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted
by the clamor of carrion crows hovering about a cypress-tree. He
looked up and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in
the branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as
if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his
wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.

"Let us get hold of the property," said he, consolingly, to himself,
"and we will endeavor to do without the woman."

As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings and
sailed off, screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized
the checked apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart and
liver tied up in it!

Such, according to this most authentic old story, was all that was to
be found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the
black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but
though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil,
yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must
have died game, however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of
cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handfuls of hair,
that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of
the woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged
his shoulders as he looked at the signs of fierce clapper-clawing.
"Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of
it!"

Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of
his wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like
gratitude toward the black woodsman, who, he considered, had done him
a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance
with him, but for some time without success; the old black-legs played
shy, for, whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for
the calling; he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his
game.

At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the
quick and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the
promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual
woodsman's dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the
swamp and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advances with
great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.

By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to
haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's
treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being
generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favors; but
there were others about which, though of less importance, he was
inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his
means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that
Tom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say, that he
should fit out a slave-ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused;
he was bad enough in all conscience, but the devil himself could not
tempt him to turn slave-trader.

Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it,
but proposed, instead, that he should turn usurer; the devil being
extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as
his peculiar people.

To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.

"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black
man.

"I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.

"You shall lend money at two per cent. a month."

"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.

"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchants to
bankruptcy--"

"I'll drive them to the devil," cried Tom Walker.

"_You_ are the usurer for my money!" said black-legs with delight.
"When will you want the rhino?"

"This very night."

"Done!" said the devil.

"Done!" said Tom Walker. So they shook hands and struck a bargain.

A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a
counting-house in Boston.

His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a
good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the time
of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time
of paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills;
the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for
speculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements,
for building cities in the wilderness; land-jobbers went about with
maps of grants and townships and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where,
but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great
speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country
had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making
sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided, the
dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients
were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the
consequent cry of "hard times."

At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as
usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy
and adventurous, the gambling speculator, the dreaming land-jobber,
the thriftless tradesman, the merchant with cracked credit--in short,
everyone driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate
sacrifices hurried to Tom Walker.

Thus Tom was the universal friend to the needy, and acted like "a
friend in need"; that is to say, he always exacted good pay and
security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the
hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages, gradually
squeezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length, dry
as a sponge, from his door.

In this way he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mighty
man, and exalted his cocked hat upon "Change." He built himself, as
usual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part
of it unfinished and unfurnished, out of parsimony. He even set up a
carriage in the fulness of his vain-glory, though he nearly starved
the horses which drew it; and, as the ungreased wheels groaned and
screeched on the axle-trees, you would have thought you heard the
souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.

As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good
things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the
next. He thought with regret of the bargain he had made with his black
friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions.
He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. He
prayed loudly and strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by force
of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during
the week by the clamor of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians
who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward were struck
with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in
their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious
as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his
neighbors, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account
became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the
expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In
a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.

Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a
lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he
might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a
small Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his
counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when
people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green
spectacles in the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to
drive some usurious bargain.

Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and
that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod,
saddled, and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he
supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside-down;
in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting,
and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for
it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he really
did take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so
says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following
manner:

One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black
thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house, in his
white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of
foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an
unlucky land-speculator for whom he had professed the greatest
friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months'
indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another
delay.

"My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish," said the
land-jobber.

"Charity begins at home," replied Tom; "I must take care of myself in
these hard times."

"You have made so much money out of me," said the speculator.

Tom lost his patience and his piety. "The devil take me," said he, "if
I have made a farthing!"

Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped
out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, which
neighed and stamped with impatience.

"Tom, you're come for," said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrank
back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his
coat-pocket and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage
he was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The
black man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse the
lash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of the
thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, and
stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down
the streets, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning-gown
fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the
pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black
man, he had disappeared.

Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman, who
lived on the border of the swamp, reported that in the height of the
thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling
along the road, and running to the window caught sight of a figure,
such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the
fields, over the hills, and down into the black hemlock swamp toward
the old Indian fort, and that shortly after a thunder-bolt falling in
that direction seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.

The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their
shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins, and
tricks of the devil, in all kinds of shapes, from the first settlement
of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might
have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's
effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching
his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were reduced to cinders. In
place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and
shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved
horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burned
to the ground.

Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all
gripping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not
to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd's
money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and
old Indian fort are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on
horseback, in morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the
troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself
into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so prevalent
throughout New England, of "The devil and Tom Walker."




DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT

_Nathaniel Hawthorne_ (1807-1864)


That very singular man, old Doctor Heidegger, once invited four
venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three
white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr.
Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman whose name was the Widow
Wycherley. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been
unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they
were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his
age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic
speculation, and was no little better than a mendicant. Colonel
Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in
the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of
pains, such as the gout and divers other torments of soul and body.
Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at
least had been so, till time had buried him from the knowledge of the
present generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for
the Widow Wycherley, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in
her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion,
on account of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the
gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning
that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel
Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow
Wycherley, and had once been on the point of cutting each other's
throats for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely
hint that Doctor Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes
thought to be a little beside themselves; as is not unfrequently the
case with old people, when worried either by present troubles or woful
recollections.

"My dear friends," said Doctor Heidegger, motioning them to be seated,
"I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments
with which I amuse myself here in my study."

If all stories were true, Doctor Heidegger's study must have been a
very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned
with cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood
several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with
rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with
little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a
bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities,
Doctor Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult
cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood
a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which
doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a
looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished
gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it
was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients
dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he
looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented
with the full-length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in the faded
magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade, and with a visage as faded
as her dress. Above half a century ago Doctor Heidegger had been on
the point of marriage with this young lady; but, being affected
with some slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's
prescriptions, and died on the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity
of the study remains to be mentioned; it was a ponderous folio volume,
bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no
letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But
it was well known to be a book of magic; and once, when a chambermaid
had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled
in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon
the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror;
while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned, and said: "Forbear!"

Such was Doctor Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale
a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the
room, sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and workmanship.
The sunshine came through the window, between the heavy festoons of
two faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this vase; so that
a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five
old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the
table.

"My dear old friends," repeated Doctor Heidegger, "may I reckon on
your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"

Now Doctor Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose
eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories.
Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be
traced back to mine own veracious self; and if any passages of the
present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to
bear the stigma of a fiction-monger.

When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed
experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder
of a mouse in an air-pump or the examination of a cobweb by the
microscope, or some similiar nonsense, with which he was constantly in
the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply,
Doctor Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the
same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report
affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened
the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what
was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had
assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to
crumble to dust in the doctor's hands.

"This rose," said Doctor Heidegger, with a sigh, "this same withered
and crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was
given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to
wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been
treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem
it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?"

"Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherley, with a peevish toss of her head.
"You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever
bloom again."

"See!" answered Doctor Heidegger.

He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the water which
it contained. At first, it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid,
appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular
change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred, and
assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving
from a death-like slumber; the slender stalk and twigs of foliage
became green; and there was the rose of half a century, looking as
fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was
scarcely full blown; for some of its delicate red leaves curled
modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops
were sparkling.

"That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's
friends; careless, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at
a conjurer's show; "pray how was it effected?"

"Did you ever hear of the 'Fountain of Youth,'" asked Doctor
Heidegger, "which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in
search of, two or three centuries ago?"

"But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?" said the Widow Wycherley.

"No," answered Doctor Heidegger, "for he never sought it in the right
place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is
situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from
Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several magnolias, which,
though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as violets,
by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine,
knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the
vase."

"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the
doctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human
frame?"

"You shall judge for yourself, my dear Colonel," replied Doctor
Heidegger; "and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so
much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth.
For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no
hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will
merely watch the progress of the experiment."

While he spoke, Doctor Heidegger had been filling the four champagne
glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently
impregnated with an effervescent gas; for little bubbles were
continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting
in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant
perfume, the old people doubted now that it possessed cordial
and comfortable properties; and though utter sceptics as to its
rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But
Doctor Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.

"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be
well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should
draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second
time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would
be if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns
of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"

The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a
feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea that,
knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they
should ever go astray again.

"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I rejoice that I have so well
selected the subjects of my experiment."

With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor,
if it really possessed such virtues as Doctor Heidegger imputed to it,
could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more
wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure
was, but had been the offspring of nature's dotage, and always the
gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat stooping
round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls or bodies
to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank
off the water, and replaced their glasses on the table.

Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of
the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of
generous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine,
brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful
suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them
look so corpselike. They gazed at one another, and fancied that
some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad
inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their
brows. The Widow Wycherley adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like
a woman again.

"Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. "We are
younger--but we are still too old! Quick--give us more!"

"Patience! patience!" quoth Doctor Heidegger, who sat watching the
experiment with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time
growing old. Surely you might be content to grow young in half an
hour! But the water is at your service."

Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of
which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the
city to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yet
sparkling on the brim, the doctor's four guests snatched their glasses
from the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it
delusion? Even while the draught was passing down their throats it
seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes
grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silvery
locks; they sat round the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and a
woman hardly beyond her buxom prime.

"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes
had been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting
from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.

The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were
not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the
mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet
her gaze. Meanwhile the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner
as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some
intoxicating qualities, unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits
were merely a lightsome dizziness, caused by the sudden removal of
the weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political
topics, but whether relating to the past, present, or future could not
easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in
vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences
about patriotism, national glory, and the people's rights; now he
muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubtful whisper,
so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the
secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents and a deeply
deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his well-turned
periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a
jolly battle-song, and ringing his glass toward the buxom figure of
the Widow Wycherley. On the other side of the table Mr. Medbourne
was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents, with which was
strangely intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with
ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs.

As for the Widow Wycherley, she stood before the mirror, courtesying
and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she
loved better than all the world beside. She thrust her face close to
the glass to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot
had indeed vanished. She examined whether the snow had so entirely
melted from her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown
aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing
step to the table.

"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass!"

"Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the complaisant doctor.
"See! I have already filled the glasses."

There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderful
water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the
surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so
nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever; but a mild
and moon-like splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alike
on the four guests, and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a
high-backed, elaborately carved oaken chair, with a gray dignity of
aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time, whose
power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even
while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were
almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage.

But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot through
their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its
miserable train of cares, and sorrows, and diseases, was remembered
only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke.
The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the
world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures,
again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like
new-created beings in a new-created universe.

"We are young! We are young!" they cried, exultingly.

Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly marked
characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all.
They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the
exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of
their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of
which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at
their old-fashioned attire--the wide-skirted coats and flapped
waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the
blooming girl. One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather;
one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to
pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated
himself in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity
of Doctor Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about
the room. The Widow Wycherley--if so fresh a damsel could be called a
widow--tripped up to the doctor's chair with a mischievous merriment
in her rosy face.

"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me!"
And then the four young people laughed louder than ever, to think what
a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.

"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. "I am old and
rheumatic, and my dancing days were over long ago. But either of these
gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner."

"Dance with me, Clara!" cried Colonel Killigrew.

"She promised me her hand fifty years ago!" exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.

They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his
passionate grasp--another threw his arm about her waist--the third
buried his hand among the curls that clustered beneath the widow's
cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath
fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself,
yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier
picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize.
Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber and
the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said
to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered
grand-sires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a
shrivelled grandam.