A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding1 several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly-wooded swamp, or morass2. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove3; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly4 from the water’s edge, into a high ridge5 on which grow a few scattered6 oaks of great age and immense size. It was under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, that Kidd the pirate buried his treasure. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill. The elevation7 of the place permitted a good look-out to be kept that no one was at hand, while the remarkable8 trees formed good landmarks9 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 guardianship10; 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 when 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 conspired11 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 prying12 about to detect her secret hoards13, 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, emblems14 of sterility15, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable16 horse, whose ribs17 were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss18, scarcely covering the ragged19 beds of pudding-stone, tantalized20 and balked21 his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, looked piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.
The house and its inmates22 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 warfare23 with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere24 between them; the lonely wayfarer25 shrunk within himself at the horrid26 clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den27 of discord28 askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy29.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood, he took what he considered a short cut homewards through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks30, some of them ninety feet high; which made it dark at noon-day, and a retreat for all the owls32 of the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires34, partly covered with weeds and mosses36; where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf37 of black smothering38 mud; there were also dark and stagnant39 pools, the abodes40 of the tadpole41, the bull-frog, and the water-snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators42, sleeping in the mire35.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous43 forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious44 footholds among deep sloughs46; or pacing carefully, like a cat, among the prostrate47 trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking48 of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary49 pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom50 of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists51. 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 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 foliage52 of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling53 to linger in this lonely, melancholy54 place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the savages55 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 reposed56 himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock31, listening to the boding57 cry of the tree-toad, and delving58 with his walking-staff into a mound59 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 skull60 with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust61 on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death blow had been given. It was a dreary62 memento63 of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors64.
“Humph!” said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.
“Let that skull alone!” said a gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld65 a great black man, seated directly Opposite him on the stump66 of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard any one approach, and he was still more perplexed67 on observing, as well as the gathering68 gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian garb69, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body, but his face was neither black nor copper70 color, but swarthy and dingy71 and begrimed with soot72, as if he had been accustomed to toil73 among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from his head in all directions; and bore an axe74 on his shoulder.
He scowled75 for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
“What are you doing in my grounds?” said the black man, with a hoarse76 growling78 voice.
“Your grounds?” said Tom, with a sneer79; “no more your grounds than mine: they belong to Deacon Peabody.”
“Deacon Peabody be d——d,” said the stranger, “as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to his neighbor’s. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring.”
Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed80, 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. He now looked round and found most of the tall trees marked with the names of some great men 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 recollected82 a mighty83 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 growl77 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 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 devoted84 this spot, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated85 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 dealers88, 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 daunted89, 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 homewards. The black man told him of great sums of money which had been 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 propitiated90 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 easily be surmised91, 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 where 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 is my signature,” said the black man, pressing his finger on Tom’s forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets92 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 burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate93.
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 prone94 to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice95 was awakened96 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 determined97 not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused out of the mere98 spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject, but the more she talked the more resolute99 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 sat off for the old Indian fort towards the close of a summer’s day. She was many hour’s absent. When she came back she was reserved and sullen100 in her replies. She spoke101 something of a black man whom she had met about twilight102, hewing103 at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory104 offering, but what it was she forebore to say.
The next evening she sat off again for the swamp, with her apron105 heavily laden106. 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 ever heard of more.
What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one of those facts that have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among the tangled107 mazes108 of the swamp and sunk into some pit or slough45; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty, and made off to some other province; while others assert that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal110 quagmire33, on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation111 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 sat out at length to seek them ............