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 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 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 forebore to say.
The next evening she sat 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
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 tangled mazes of the swamp and sunk 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
assert that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire, on 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 sat
out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort.
