Under an arbor fresh with vines, and fragrant with flowers, sat Peter
Dorfner, his rotund form resting in a stout oaken chair. It was a very
pleasant thing to note the contrast between his red cheeks and white
beard, and the deep green of the leaves, the varied tints of the flowers.
Before him was placed a table of unpainted oak, on which sundry suspicious
bottles stood like the sentinels of the scene. And half-closing his
eyes, with his limbs resting on a bench, old Peter resigned himself to the
calm delights of rum and tobacco.

It was a pleasant arbor, standing at one end of the garden, near the
farm-house, whose closed doors and windows looked black and desolate
beneath the cheerful light of the summer sun.

It must be confessed, that old Peter was surrounded by all the delights
that can render a man peaceful with himself and the world. Lulled by
the unceasing murmur of the bees, who sung their songs among the
flowers, with the fragrance of new-mown hay stealing gently over the
fields, Peter Dorfner, with his red cheeks and snowy beard, his capacious
form spreading lazily in the oaken chair, looked altogether like a picture
of some corpulent satyr of Grecian story, clad in brown cloth, with a pipe
in its mouth, and a bottle of rum near its hand. Or, in case this comparison
should seem unjust, we might compare him to some Hermit of the
middle ages, who disgusted with the vanity of the world, had retired to
some secluded forest, and sworn a solemn oath, to devote himself forever
to fatness and sleep, those cardinal duties of the monks of old.

Beyond the garden, amid whose plants and flowers the arbor rose, a
green field smiled in the June sunbeams, and stretched to the south and
west in gentle undulations, until it was bounded by the summer woods.
Strong men, with arms bare and scythe in hand, toiled among the grass,
scattering swarths of fragrant hay as they hurried along. Tired cattle
were grouped in the shade, on the verge of the wood; aldermanic oxen
and matronly cows, snuffing the scent of the new-mown hay, from which
they were separated by that kind of rural architecture, known in grave annals
as “Worm Fence.” Now and then, the sound of the whetstone applied
to the scythe, came merrily over the field, mingled with the lowing
of cattle, and the subdued murmur of the hidden stream.

[figure description] Page 224.[end figure description]

Summer was upon the scene, in all the freshness and beauty of June.
There was a serene sky, only varied by passing clouds, who turned their
white bosoms to the sun, and floated slowly over the woods. There
was a drowsy fragrance in the very air, a fulness of intoxicating odours;
and the bees among the flowers, the lowing cattle grouped in the shadows,
the clang of the scythe, and the indistinct sound of the wood-hidden Wissahikon,
formed the music of the scene, a very lulling music altogether,
full of summer and voluptuous as June.

But the old farm-house looked sad and deserted. There were green
vines trailing about its steep roof, and flinging their leaves, their flowers,
from the very point of the high gable; the chesnut tree was glorious with
verdure, but the doors of the farm-house, the closed shutters, gave it a
lonely and desolate appearance.

Secluded in the arbor, his only companions the pipe and the bottles,
Peter Dorfner took his ease, and winked sleepily at care, as though there
was never a thing like trouble in the world.

Two years have passed since we beheld him last, two years full of interest
and incident, and the face of Peter discloses more wrinkles about
the eyes, more fatness in the cheeks, a sublimer rotundity about the form.
Brown waistcoat loosened, hose ungartered, and cravat thrown aside,
Peter languidly smoked his pipe, and seemed hesitating for a moment, ere
he entered the domains of that ancient empire, known to philosophers and
poets as the Land of Nod.

Rousing himself for a moment, he exclaimed, in a sleepy tone, “Sam
I say! Where are you, you blind devil?”

In answer to this bland inquiry, a voice was heard—

“I'se here, Massa. I is,” and, starting from a nook of the arbor over-shadowed
by foliage, the blind Negro appeared in the light, his sightless
eyeballs rolling in their sockets.

“Fill my glass and fix my pipe, or—or—”

The good Peter Dorfner was fast asleep. With his head resting on
one shoulder, and his gouty hands placed on his paunch, he had dropped
into the land of dreams. Corpulent dreams, no doubt, blooming in fatness,
with pipes between their lips, and beakers of rum-punch in their
hands.

Black Sam, dressed in a suit of coarse gray homespun, stood behind
his master's chair, listening with great earnestness, while his forehead
became corrugated with innumerable wrinkles, his thick lips were
distorted in a grin, and his eyeballs rolled unceasingly in their sockets.

“Are yo' 'sleep, Massa?” he whispered—then listened for a moment—
“He am 'sleep, by gum,” he added, in a tone that was scarcely audible.

Then, raising his black hands, seamed with scars and knotted in the
joints, above the white hairs of the sleeping old man, Black Sam stood
for a moment with his sightless eyeballs lifted toward Heaven. An

[figure description] Page 225.[end figure description]

expression as sudden as it was frightful came over his face; that visage,
black as soot, contrasted with the hair, which, frosted by age, resembled
white wool, was in truth most horrible to behold. Clenching his knotted
fingers, the negro uttered certain words, not in broken English, but in
some unknown tongue, perchance the language of his clime and race.

The good Peter Dorfner snored in his slumber; a substantial snore,
which, had it taken a form to itself, might certainly have appeared in the
shape of a full-blown poppy, overcome with liquor and tired for want of
sleep. In his corpulent slumber, lulled by obese dreams, with pipes in
their lips and mugs of rum in their hands, the convivial Peter did not for
a moment chance to think of the black visage which scowled above him,
while lips distorted by rage muttered vengeance upon his head.

“Punch—don't know how to make punch?” Peter murmured in his
sleep, with a chuckle that seemed choked to death, while on its way from
his chest to his lips. “Some first-rate whiskey—Irish, if you can get it—
a spice of lemon peel—a—a—”

Peter ended the injunction with a snore, while the negro cautiously
placed one hand upon the breast of the sleeping man, and with the other
brandished a common table-knife, sharpened to a point.

Again those words in the unknown tongue, accompanied by the
hideous cortortion, and then the Negro muttered in broken English—

“For sixteen—seventeen year, dis nigga watch his time. Sometime
he tink he put pisen in yo' drink. Sometime come to yo' bed an' choke
yo' in yo' dam sleep. Now he no fail!”

How lightly that brawny left hand touched the breast of the slumbering
man, as if to mark the point of the intended blow, while the knife,
clenched in the uplifted right hand, shone with its sharpened point over
the old man's head!

Certainly the negro was a maniac; a poor wretch, deprived of sight
and reason. Else wherefore should he wish to stab the good old man
who had fed him at his table, and given him to drink of his cup, for so
many years? Perchance some memory of a petty slight, received long
years before, nerved the negro's arm; it may have been that the blind
man had been stolen from Africa, and cherished a mad resentment against
every member of the white race.

The knife glittered faintly in the negro's grasp, as, hidden by the
foliage of the arbor, he silently prepared himself for his work of murder.

“Sam kin feel yo' heart, ole boy—dere's for de white woman and de
little chile—dere—”

The knife descended, urged by an arm that was nerved by madness—
perchance by revenge.

“Wait a minute, my dark friend, and you may kill him at your leisure,”
said a bland voice.

The negro could not see, but he felt that a third person was present at

[figure description] Page 226.[end figure description]

this scene; he was seized with an ague-like tremor; the knife fell from
his hand. He sank on the gravel which formed the floor of the arbor,
and, in a whispering tone, begged for mercy.

“By gum, dis nigga no 'tend to hurt Massa Dorfen one little hair!
Dat am trut, so it am—Massa! Massa! Don't hurt ole Sam—”

“Will you be still, my dear charcoal? Will you stop your cursed hullabaloo?
Or shall I just put a pistol to your head, and blow you into
several pieces?”

The poor wretch, cowering on the gravel, heard the bland voice, felt
the cold muzzle of the pistol pressing against his temple, and then muttered
faintly—“Kill de nigga, but don't wake de old boy!”

The voice of the unknown was heard again, rising into a jovial shout—

“Dorfner, I say! Hello, man, is this the way you treat your friends—
stir yourself, or I'll drink your liquor and stick the neck of an empty
bottle in your yawning jaws. Dorfner, I say!”

Started by the clamor, Peter unclosed his eyes, and looked around with
the peculiarly vacant glance of a corpulent gentleman aroused from a
pleasant slumber.

“Good morning, friend,” he slowly said—“Why, what in the d—l
have we here?”

Peter removed his feet from the table, started erect in his chair, and
looked in the face of the intruder with an expression of ludicrous surprise.

It was a very grave, sober-looking gentleman who stood before him,
with his back to the afternoon sun, and his head and shoulders relieved
by a glimpse of the blue sky, smiling beyond the distant woods. A very
grave, sedate personage, indeed, dressed in black cloth from head to foot,
with cravat and ruffles of inexpressible whiteness, and silver buckles about
the knees and feet.

It is true that this sombre costume gave a somewhat singular boldness
to the marked outline of his figure, which in the body resembled a barrel,
and in the lower limbs suggested the idea of bean-poles, or something
excessively lank and thin, supporting something particularly round
and fat.

Beneath the black hat which the stranger wore, appeared or rather
shone a very sober countenance, with eyes like minute points of glass,
sparkling in a flame, cheeks red as Etna, a little nose that could hardly
be called a nose, and a mouth which threatened every move to invade the
ears and take possession of the back part of the head.

It was a marked face, no doubt, and, notwithstanding its demure expression,
was well calculated to excite tears of—laughter.

“Peter,” said the stranger, quite blandly, as, with his large right hand,
half-concealed by an enormous ruffle, he described a circle in the air—
“Peter, my friend, allow me to subside into a little decorous emotion on
this interesting occasion. It is a long time since I have seen you, Peter

[figure description] Page 227.[end figure description]

—it seems a trifling matter of some nine or ten centuries. But we grow
old, my boy—we grow old—it was the remark of an ancient sage, no less
renowned for the majesty of his head, than the strength of his heart,—it
was his remark, Peter—and it shows an expansive thought, my boy,—
that—that—shall I repeat the remark, my dear Peter?”

The old man passed his hands over his white beard, thrust his fingers
in the corners of his eyes, twitched at his gaiters, and shook his fat frame,
like a frolicsome dog, who has been indulging in a bath.

“Am I awake, or am I dreamin'? Sam! I say, Sam! come here, you
scoundrel, and let me pinch you, so that I may know whether I am asleep
or not. S-a-m!”

But Sam did not appear—crouching behind the oaken chair of his
master, he wished to seclude himself from public view, with a modesty
worthy of an ancient hermit.

“Shall I repeat the remark, Peter?” continued the stranger, bowing
profoundly.

“In the first place,—” grunted Dorfner—“You'll be so kind as to tell
us who you are, and what you want, and then take yourself off, as quick
as your legs will carry you. You have legs—eh?”

The old fellow smiled like a blustery March day, relenting all at once
into the First of April. By no means discomposed, the stranger placed his
hand upon his breast, lowered his head, and stood for a moment in an
attitude of profound meditation.

“To think of an event and a day like this!” he exclaimed, in a tone
whose shrillness reminded one of the voice of some demure spinster, who,
having refused fifty-one offers of marriage, has settled down at last, into
the Censor of a small neighborhood—“Here I am after a long absence,
and there is Peter! I have thought of the blessed meeting—dreamed of
it! I come at last; I see him—not encompassed by the cares of the world,
but sitting in an arbor, with a white beard and a bottle of rum, and five
strapping fellows mowin' hay in the distance. It is thus I see him——
thus—regaled by the combined fragrance of new-mown hay and black
strap, and he does not know me!”

The poor fellow was lost in grief. Burying his face in his large hands,
he stood opposite the astonished Peter, a picture of despair.

“Sam, S-a-m, I say! You black rascal, come here and tell me, in the
name of Satan, who is this fellow?”

“He don't know me yet,” soliloquized the stranger, rubbing the tip of
his nose with the forefinger of his right hand—“Cast your eyes through
the dim vistas of memory, and call to mind that touching night, when we
all got drunk together—Will you, my dear?”

“Why, it is—Jacopo!” ejaculated Dorfner, with eyes like saucers.

“Jacopo? That was my name, my love. Your venerable exterior serves
to remind me of it—painfully. But now, since I have taken orders, and

[figure description] Page 228.[end figure description]

been commissioned by an Archbishop or two, to wear a gown, I am called
the Reverend Jacob James.”

“You wear a gown! you preach! Ho, ho, ho—I should like to hear you.
Git up on that bench and give us a slice o' divinity, will you?”

Jacopo, or the Reverend Jacob James, as he now designates himself,
took a seat on the bench near the chair of the old man, and in affecting
silence proceeded to fill a glass with a great deal of rum and a very small
portion of water. After which he drank the mixture with a sigh of calm
delight.

“How is it with you, old boy?” He slapped Mr. Dorfner on the
shoulder.

“Purty well, I thank you,—how's yourself?”

“Poorly—poo-r-ly,” sighed Jacopo, filling a pipe, and striking a light
from a tinder-box, which stood among the bottles—“My labors for the
regeneration of my species, and so on, have struck into my pulmonaries.
Don't you see how thin I am?”

The old man struggled with a fit of laughter, which seemed determined
to choke him to death. The wide mouth, little nose, diminutive eyes and
red cheeks of Jacopo, all subdued by an expression of exemplary
sobriety, contrasted somewhat ludricrously with his rotund form and
spider legs.

“Droll as ever,” laughed old Peter—“You'll be the death o' me, you
dog. Where have you been these two years, and—” Peter glanced stealthily
around the arbor—“Where's your master—John—eh?”

“I have discharged him. He did not suit me,” replied Jacopo, elaborating
another glass of rum and water. “By-the-bye, how do things go
with you? It's now a matter of two years and six months since we
parted. What's the matter—hey? Your house shut up like a tomb?
Where's the little girl—Madeline—Hello! the old man's choking to
death, with a gallopin' consumption—”

The cheerful visage of the benevolent Peter grew pale and then deep
purple; his eyes were fixed, and indeed his changed countenance manifested
various indications of an apoplectic fit.

Jacopo revived him by a copious bath of rum and water, dashed
violently in his face. It was some moments, however, before the good
man revived.

“Sich a pain as I had—sich a stitch in my side—ugh! I feel quite cold.
Mix me a leetle rum and light me a pipe, will you?”

Jacopo obeyed. With a tenderness that was quite filial, he prepared the
draught and the pipe. The old man's white beard was presently obscured
by a veil of tobacco smoke.

“You asked after Madeline,” he said, quite calmly, with his eyes
twinkling from the half-closed lids—“We never heard of her since that
night. There was blood upon the floor, but that was all.”

[figure description] Page 229.[end figure description]

“And the hunter—Tom, I think they called him?”

“Gilbert,—Gilbert—never heard o' him nayther,” mumbled Peter, without
removing the pipe from his lips.

“You don't say! A girl and a boy disappear on one night—it looks as
if they went off together—”

“Or as if he took her off and then made tracks himself—” suggested
Dorfner, with a singular twinkle in his half-shut eyes.

“How's matters about here just now, anyhow? Eh? King or Country?
Which way do you drink?”

“That is a ticklish question. There's a great deal to be said on both
sides, but I s'pose you won't object to fill a glass to His Majesty, God
bless him!”

The good old man lifted his hand as if to raise his hat from his head,
but finding nothing like a hat, he apologized by raising the glass to
his lips.

“King, God bless him,” cried Jacopo, “or, Continental Congress—I
don't care a tuppence which.”

“Hey? what kind of man are you, anyhow? A—”

—“Man just like yourself, fond of peace and plenty, quietness and
tobacco, sound principles and Jamaica rum. Tut—tut, Peter. Why
should you and I quarrel about these trifling things? What difference
does it make to us, whether we have a King George or a King Washington?”

Jacopo winked rather familiarly at the old man, and placing his spindle-shanks
upon the table, leaned against the frame-work of the arbor, while
each corner of his extensive mouth emitted a cloud of bluish smoke.
Dorfner regarded him with half-shut eyes, and yet with a look of searching
scrutiny. Two years had not indeed given more wrinkles to the bluff
countenance of the old man, or stolen a solitary tint from his blooming
cheeks, but his intellect seemed impaired, his memory confused and dim.
Even as he gazed sidelong into the complacent visage of Jacopo, he murmured—
“Queer fellow—queer! Where have I seen him? Odd—droll—
queer!”

“That was quite a touching incident,” exclaimed Jacopo, after a long
pause—“It melted me. I was all brandy and tears.”

“What are you drivin' at?” cried Peter, still eyeing his eccentric
companion.

“It was so very affecting. It worked upon me like peppered brandy.
It seemed to touch you a little—just a little—”

Jacopo uttered these words without the slightest change in the grotesque
complacency of his face; his feet were on the table, the pipe between his
lips, and the glass of rum in his hand.

Peter opened his eyes. He regarded his friend with a wild stare.

“You were saying something, but whether my head is thick, or

[figure description] Page 230.[end figure description]

whether you are drunk, I cannot tell. Speak out, will you—and if it's all
the same to you, speak it in English—”

“Why, Peter,” said Jacopo, eyeing with calm satisfaction a puff of
smoke which floated slowly upward toward the fragrant ceiling of the
arbor—“I was just thinking of the poor girl—Amelia Caroline, I think you
call her?”

“Madeline,” said the old man rather sharply.

“Madeline: that's it. (Do you observe that cloud of smoke? how much
it looks like his blessed Majesty—there's his nose)—Madeline. That's
the name. What a scene when she woke from her faintin' fit on that
night! I never could get her words out of my mind—could you, Peter?”

“What words?”

The old man laid his pipe on the table, and rested his cheeks between
his hands, his eyes growing brighter and larger as he gazed steadily into
the face of the immovable Jacopo.

“Just watch that puff, will you? Did ever you see sich a capital
Turk's head—the nose is perfect!—Oh, as to the girl's words, I can't of
course remember them, but you know, that she said something about her
mother being put out of the way, some eighteen years before—”

“The d—l she did!” Peter's lips parted, disclosing his white teeth
set firmly together.

“Can't you call to mind? Peter, you are dull. How her mother was
brought to the farm-house of Wissahikon, and `while in the pains of a
mother's anguish—' You remember, Peter?”

Jacopo did not cast his gaze toward the face of the old man; indeed he
seemed to avoid his glance. But, had he looked into that face, he would
have encountered an expression of ferocity, such as is not oftentime
coupled with venerable hair and white beard.

The old man did not speak a word in reply, but sank back into his
chair and closed his eyes.

After a moment, Jacopo ventured to turn his gaze—ventured, we say,
for he seemed conscious that he was provoking the rage of a man who
was neither to be trusted nor despised.

“There he sits, like a venerable Pope, fast asleep among seventeen
Cardinals. It is a glorious picture! O for the pencil of a Vandyke, a
Godfrey Kneller, or a Michael Angelo, to sketch that nose, and make that
beard eternal in white paint and canvass! What a dear old man he is,
after all—such traits of virtue amid his fatness, such streaks of worth
amid his ripeness!”

With ejaculations such as these, Jacopo watched the slumbering man,
murmuring now and then in an undertone—“What a perfect old devil—
shouldn't wonder if he had a hoof and two claws.”

“The dear old 'possum!” he resumed in a loud voice—“He thinks
he'll make believe to be fast asleep, so that I can drink his liquor at my

[figure description] Page 231.[end figure description]

leisure, without shocking the delicate modesty of my nature. Good man!
But no—he is asleep—ah, that snore—a snore that seems to sit in his
nose like a monk in a cloister, and sings hoarse anthems in praise of fatness—
Peter, I say! Wake up and drink, will you?”

The corpulent Peter unclosed his eyes.

“You there yet?” he said, in a gruff tone.

“Did you think I'd leave you? Why, I mean to stay all night with
you, and we'll have a good time together, and then to-morrow you may
over-persuade me to stay for a few days more. I am of an obliging disposition.
When I was in Italy, the Pope remarked in the most delicate
manner, `My dear Jack,' says he—we were taking a few bottles
together in a private chamber in the Vatican—`My dear Jack—' says he—
for he called me Jack for short—”

The remark uttered by the Pope to his friend Jack, while taking a few
bottles of wine together, was no doubt very beautiful, but it is lost in
hopeless oblivion. For as Jacepo, calmly puffing his pipe, was about to
repeat the said remark, for the gratification of his friend Peter, the good
old man, with an abrupt exclamation, bearing some resemblance to an oath,
broke his pipe, and wished Jacopo and the Pope to the—end of the
world. He did not say `end of the world,' it is true, for he named a dark
personage who commits all the sin in the universe, leaving poor mortality
scathless and innocent.

“I want to know what you mean by makin' fun o' me?” continued
Peter—“Tellin' me these cock-and-bull stories, and fillin' yourself with
the idea that I'm a-goin' to invite you to take up your abode in my house.
Why—Mister What's-your-name, I don't know you.”

This was to the point. Had you seen the old man's face flushing with
anger from his white beard to the roots of his hair, while his clenched
hand descended heavily upon the table, you would have realized the full
force of his words.

Jacopo smoked away, looking neither to the right nor left, nor down
his nose, but straight forward, his whole attention riveted by the fragrant
clouds which floated around the bowl of his pipe.

“Do you hear?” thundered the old man, “I say your room is better
than your company. Tramp!”

“Peter,” said Jacopo very mildly, without turning his head—“Your
insinuations are indelicate. A stranger listening to us, and ignorant of
our sworn friendship, might draw unfavorable inferences from your
sly hints.”

The good Peter Dorfner could not believe his eyes or trust his ears.
To be bearded at his own table, and in his own arbor, over his own
liquor, by a man whose body resembled a barrel supported by broom-sticks!

There were strange rumors among the country folks in regard to Peter

[figure description] Page 232.[end figure description]

He was either a basely slandered, or much mistaken man. His temper
was ferocious; the source of his wealth mysterious; few of the neighbors
came any longer to his farm-house, and even the men who worked for
him, regarded the good old man with an indefinable fear. Had he not
turned law, divinity and physic into ridicule, by beguiling Lawyer Simmons,
Doctor Perkenpine and a grave Parson into a supper of barbecued—
cats? Every farm-house of the Wissahikon was full of the Legend,
and even the firesides of Germantown grew pale at the idea. Mingled
with this grave matter, there was a trifling suspicion of Murder hanging
around the history of the benevolent man.

Peter was somewhat proud of his reputation; even as some distinguished
literary gentleman of the modern day, is delighted at being compared
to a certain animal,—called pork! when it is dead—so the good
old man grew merry at the epithets—“Beast and Bear!”

You may therefore imagine the amazement, the indignation struggling
into life on Peter's face, when he beheld himself defied and insulted by
the sublime impertinence of Jacopo.

“Sly hints, indeed!” he exclaimed, panting for breath as his visage
grew purple with rage. “Shall I kick you all over my farm?”

Jacopo smoked in silence, glancing meanwhile at a piece of printed
paper which he had taken from his pocket. It looked like the fragment
of an old newspaper, and was somewhat triangular in form. A singular
grimace agitated Jacopo's face as he perused the irregular sentences and
broken words, which appeared upon this dingy relic:

was
cealed in a closet,
looks out upon a large
rfner, with the Corpse, also
rchments and papers, which
lead to some knowledge of the
the poor victim. This all occu
Twenty-third of November, 1756; and in ma
this confession, I ask forgiveness of mankind for
share in this detestable Crime, and Pray the L

Such was the fragment, on which Jacopo gazed with great satisfaction,
his eyes twinkling with an expression of quiet malice, while his enormous
mouth displayed its full magnitude in a hideous grin.

“Now that looks very much like nonsense, and it's but a dirty piece
of an old newspaper after all,” Jacopo murmured, without removing the
pipe from his mouth, “and yet there may exist, somewhere in the world,
another piece of paper,—newspaper too—which, attached to this, would
make it read quite sensibly. By-the-bye, friend Peter, did you ever hear
of a Philadelphia merchant named Hopkins?”

[figure description] Page 233.[end figure description]

The last words addressed to Dorfner only elicited an oath, coupled
with the words—

“The scoundrel! He was here some time, years ago, prying into my
affairs, and wanting to know what had become of Madeline. The dog!
Will you travel, sirrah?”

Jacopo rose from his seat, and carefully placed his pipe upon the table.
Then looking into Peter's face, which, purpled by rage, glared in a ray of
sunshine, Jacopo placed his hand within the breast of his waistcoat.

“Do you see this little bit o' convenience? A pistol, nothing but a
pistol, mounted in silver and loaded with ball. I am a great coward,
Peter—you can see me tremble, if you look sharp. So I carry this trifle,
and another trifle like it, for I am told that you are afflicted with mad
dogs on the Wissahikon.

Jacopo spoke the truth. He was a coward—a pitiable coward, afraid
of the report of a pistol, frightened at the smell of burnt powder. Yet,
on the present occasion, nerved by an inexplicable influence into something
like courage, he dared to confront the irritable old man, and defy
him on his own ground.

“Sam, I say,—where's that nigger? Sam, go into the farm-house and
bring me my pistols.”

There was a deadly light in the old man's gray eye—his lips were
violently agitated. But the blind negro did not appear, and Dorfner,
purple with rage, and unable, from a delicate twinge of gout, to move with
his accustomed vigor, was left exposed to the round face, wide mouth and
impertinent eyes of the intruder.

“Your impertinence is only a cloak, by * * *!” thundered the old
man—“You have some deeper motive—”

As if conscious that he had said too much, old Peter suddenly halted,
took up his pipe and began to smoke again. The hand which held the
pipe trembled like a leaf.

Jacopo resumed his seat. Amid all his bravado, there was delicately
perceptible an inexhaustible endowment of cowardice. Once or twice
he shuddered as his eye rested upon the inflamed visage of Dorfner, but,
disguising all marked indications of emotion, he silently examined his
pistols.

“Ha, ha—” a hearty laugh almost frightened Jacopo from his seat—
“Ha, ha, my boy, did you think to make the old boy mad with you?
Capitally done, by * * *! But you did not succeed, ha, ha, ha! You
shall stay all the night with me, and we'll have a good time o't together.
You and me only, my good fellow, for I don't care about the company of
the neighbors. I'll brew you a punch, an old-fashioned punch, and you
will sing and fiddle, and we'll go reeling to our beds—ho, ho, my
boy! you don't know old Peter yet!”

Had the table taken wings and flown through the top of the arbor,

[figure description] Page 234.[end figure description]

Jacopo could not have been half so much confounded as he was now, by
the sudden hilarity, the extemporaneous good-fellowship of the old man.

“We will, old boy, we will!” he shrilly shouted, as soon as he could
command the power of speech—“A night of it together—that's the word!
I'll drink to your white beard, and you will drink to my legs, and—” he
added in a tone inaudible to Peter—“I'll take good care that you don't
put medicine in my liquor, or steel to my throat.”

“Where have you been all this time;—these two years and six
months?” kindly inquired Dorfner.

“Engaged on business of state,” responded Jacopo—“Settling a little
difficulty between my friend the Pope and the Emperor of Germany.
But let me ask a question in return—how have you been all this while?
Any news stirring about the region? The old Wizard alive yet?”

“Gone these two years. His house is shut up—nobody at home.
Supposed by some—ha, ha—that he is gone to his Master—ho, ho!”

It was a lame jest, and yet the fat old fellow laughed heartily, until his
broad paunch and white beard shook in sympathy.

“Then there was a queer body, whom you all feared—how's this
they called him? Paul—Paul—Birmingham—was that the name?”

“Paul Ardenheim,” said the old man, with a sudden and marked change
of voice—“He has never been seen on the Wissahikon, since the last
night of Seventy-four.”

“Had he no family? Was not there an old house, castle or monastery,
somewhere up here, among the woods? The young man had a father;
a sister: do tell us all about him!”

“We never mention those people,” said Dorfner, glancing over his
shoulder with an uneasy gesture—“I don't believe much in devils, but
it's not safe to trifle with such matters. Nobody about Wissahikon
speaks of him—that is, you know, Paul—or of his people—”

“But the monastery, or castle, or what in the deuce do you call it?”

“I'll not call it any thing just now. Talk about something else.”

“You don't believe in devils? My dear old boy, don't you know that
it's impossible to doubt the existence of a Devil? You may not believe
in a God, but as to a Devil—human nature could not get along without
one. I believe in Devils. Pity the poor devil who don't.”

As he said this, Jacopo drew once more from his pocket the fragment
of printed paper, which we have given to the reader, and glanced over it
with a peculiar grimace, muttering with a chuckle—“Hopkins is a merchant,
but he is sharp, dev'lish sharp! Twenty-third of November, fifty-six—
those kind o' dates are like Devils. I believe in 'em.”

“What's that?” cried Dorfner—“Where did you get that slip of paper?
It is mine—I'll swear it!”

He started from his chair, reached over the table, and attempted to
grasp the fragment. His features were agitated by a mingled expression,

[figure description] Page 235.[end figure description]

which Jacopo could not altogether comprehend. It was not fear, it was
not rage, but seemed like fear and anger, struggling with a darker
emotion.

“I was going to light my pipe with it,” said Jacopo, very quietly—“I
picked it up near the garden-gate. Take it, my old boy. By-the-bye,
what does that Twenty-Third of November, `fifty-six,' mean? Day of
your birth, I suppose; and yet you look older than twenty-one.”

Peter took the paper, and pressed it against the table with his thumb,
at the same time drawing from a pocket another fragment, which fitted it
with great nicety, thus producing the appearance of one piece of paper,
square in form, and filled with the same printed characters.

Jacopo would have given the richest tint on his infinitesmal nose for the
privilege of perusing this second fragment, which was evidently a part of
the first. He beheld Dorfner gazing upon it, with his eyes downcast,
and his head bent upon his broad chest—he saw the fingers of the old
man shake with an irrepressible tremor. Rising from his seat, he glided
with a noiseless footstep to the side of his aged companion, and looked
stealthily over his shoulder.

His small eyes dilated as he beheld the printed characters, and he
could not repress an ejaculation which his surprise forced to his lips.