Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, vol 2 | Page 8

was heard to make a muttered assertion that it was his own
money anyhow, and that while he lived he would be the head of his
own house; then the mutterings grew faint and merged into snores.

When he awoke it was at the low sound of voices in the next room, and
drowsily turning his head he saw there two strangers,--sailors, he
thought, from their leather jackets, black beards, and the rings in their
ears. What was that they said? Gold? On the marshes? At the old
Flatlands tide-mill? The talkers had gone before his slow and foggy
brain could grasp it all, but when the idea had fairly eaten its way into
his intellect, he arose with the nearest approach to alacrity that he had
exhibited in years, and left the place. He crunched back to his home,
and seeing nobody astir went softly into his shed, where he secured a
shovel and lantern, and thence continued with all consistent speed to
the tumbledown tide-mill on the marsh,--a trying journey for his fat
legs on a sharp night, but hope and schnapps impelled him.
He reached the mill, and, hastening to the cellar, began to probe in the
soft, unfrozen earth. Presently his spade struck something, and he dug
and dug until he had uncovered the top of a canvas bag,--the sort that
sailors call a "round stern-chest." It took all his strength to lug it out,
and as he did so a seam burst, letting a shower of gold pieces over the
ground. He loosed the band of his breeches, and was filling the legs
thereof with coin, when a tread of feet sounded overhead and four men
came down the stair. Two of them he recognized as the fellows of the
tavern. They saw the bag, the lantern, then Nicholas. Laden though he
was with gold until he could hardly budge, these pirates, for such they
were, got him up-stairs, forced him to drink hot Hollands to the success
of their flag, then shot him through the window into the creek. As he
was about to make this unceremonious exit he clutched something to
save himself, and it proved to be a plucked goose that the pirates had
stolen from a neighboring farm and were going to sup on when they
had scraped their gold together. He felt the water and mud close over
him; he struggled desperately; he was conscious of breathing more
freely and of staggering off at a vigorous gait; then the power of all the
schnapps seemed to get into his head, and he remembered no more
until he heard his wife shrilling in his ears, when he sat up and found
himself in a snow-bank close to his house, with a featherless goose
tight in his grasp.
Vrouw Van Wempel cared less about the state of her spouse when she
saw that he had secured the bird, and whenever he told his tale of the
pirates she turned a deaf ear to him, for if he had found the gold why

did he not manage to bring home a few pieces of it? He, in answer,
asked how, as he had none of his own money, she could have come by
the goose? He often told his tale to sympathetic ears, and would point
to the old mill to prove that it was true.

THE WEARY WATCHER
Before the opening of the great bridge sent commerce rattling up
Washington Street in Brooklyn that thoroughfare was a shaded and
beautiful avenue, and among the houses that attested its respectability
was one, between Tillary and Concord Streets, that was long declared
to be haunted. A man and his wife dwelt there who seemed to be fondly
attached to each other, and whose love should have been the stronger
because of their three children none grew to years. A mutual sorrow is
as close a tie as a common affection. One day, while on a visit to a
friend, the wife saw her husband drive by in a carriage with a showy
woman beside him. She went home at once, and when the supposed
recreant returned she met him with bitter reproaches. He answered
never a word, but took his hat and left the house, never to be seen again
in the places that had known him.
The wife watched and waited, daily looking for his return, but days
lengthened into weeks, months, years, and still he came not. Sometimes
she lamented that she had spoken hastily and harshly, thinking that, had
she known all, she might have found him blameless. There was no
family to look after, no wholesome occupation that she sought, so the
days went by in listening and watching, until, at last, her body and
mind gave way, and the familiar