Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, vol 2 | Page 7

the Indian he had
killed. The form approached the treasure, flung up its arm, uttered a
few guttural words; then a rising wind seemed to lift it from the ground
and it drifted toward the Sound, fading like a cloud as it receded.
Full of misgiving, Gardiner drove to his home, and, by light of a lantern,
transferred his treasure to his cellar. Was it the dulness of the candle
that made the metal look so black? After a night of feverish tossing on
his bed he arose and went to the cellar to gloat upon his wealth. The
light of dawn fell on a heap of gray dust, a few brassy looking particles
showing here and there. The curse of the ghost had been of power and
the silver was silver no more. Mineralogists say that the nodules are
iron pyrites. Perhaps so; but old residents know that they used to be
silver.

THE CORTELYOU ELOPEMENT
In the Bath district of Brooklyn stands Cortelyou manor, built one
hundred and fifty years ago, and a place of defence during the
Revolution when the British made sallies from their camp in Flatbush
and worried the neighborhood. It was in one of these forays on pigs and
chickens that a gallant officer of red-coats met a pretty lass in the fields
of Cortelyou. He stilled her alarm by aiding her to gather wild- flowers,
and it came about that the girl often went into the fields and came back
with prodigious bouquets of daisies. The elder Cortelyou had no
inkling of this adventure until one of his sons saw her tryst with the
red-coat at a distance. Be sure the whole family joined him in
remonstrance. As the girl declared that she would not forego the
meetings with her lover, the father swore that she should never leave
his roof again, and he tried to be as good, or bad, as his word. The
damsel took her imprisonment as any girl of spirit would, but was
unable to effect her escape until one evening, as she sat at her window,
watching the moon go down and paint the harbor with a path of light. A
tap at the pane, as of a pebble thrown against it, roused her from her
revery. It was her lover on the lawn.
At her eager signal he ran forward with a light ladder, planted it against

the window-sill, and in less than a minute the twain were running
toward the beach; but the creak of the ladder had been heard, and
grasping their muskets two of the men hurried out. In the track of the
moon the pursuers descried a moving form, and, without waiting to
challenge, they levelled the guns and fired. A woman's cry followed the
report; then a dip of oars was heard that fast grew fainter until it faded
from hearing. On returning to the house they found the girl's room
empty, and next morning her slipper was brought in from the mud at
the landing. Nobody inside of the American lines ever learned what
that shot had done, but if it failed to take a life it robbed Cortelyou of
his mind. He spent the rest of his days in a single room, chained to a
staple in the floor, tramping around and around, muttering and
gesturing, and sometimes startling the passer-by as he showed his white
face and ragged beard at the window.

VAN WEMPEL'S GOOSE
Allow us to introduce Nicholas Van Wempel, of Flatbush: fat,
phlegmatic, rich, and henpecked. He would like to be drunk because he
is henpecked, but the wife holds the purse-strings and only doles out
money to him when she wants groceries or he needs clothes. It was
New Year's eve, the eve of 1739, when Vrouw Van Wempel gave to
her lord ten English shillings and bade him hasten to Dr. Beck's for the
fat goose that had been bespoken. "And mind you do not stop at the
tavern," she screamed after him in her shrillest tone. But poor Nicholas!
As he went waddling down the road, snapping through an ice-crust at
every step, a roguish wind--or perhaps it was one of the bugaboos that
were known to haunt the shores of Gravesend Bay--snatched off his hat
and rolled it into the very doorway of the tavern that he had been
warned, under terrible penalties, to avoid.
As he bent to pick it up the door fell ajar, and a pungency of schnapps
and tobacco went into his nostrils. His resolution, if he had one,
vanished. He ordered one glass of schnapps; friends came in and
treated him to another; he was bound to do as much for them; shilling
by shilling the goose money passed into the till of the landlord.
Nicholas