The landlord had always a pleasant word and a joke, to
insinuate in the ear of the august Ramm. It is true, Ramm never
laughed, and, indeed, maintained a mastiff-like gravity, and even
surliness of aspect, yet he now and then rewarded mine host with a
token of approbation; which, though nothing more nor less than a kind
of grunt, yet delighted the landlord more than a broad laugh from a
poorer man.
"This will be a rough night for the money-diggers," said mine host, as
a gust of wind howled round the house, and rattled at the windows.
"What, are they at their works again?" said an English half-pay
captain, with one eye, who was a frequent attendant at the inn.
"Aye, are they," said the landlord, "and well may they be. They've had
luck of late. They say a great pot of money has been dug up in the
field, just behind Stuyvesant's orchard. Folks think it must have been
buried there in old times by Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch Governor."
"Fudge!" said the one-eyed man of war, as he added a small portion of
water to a bottom of brandy.
"Well, you may believe, or not, as you please," said mine host,
somewhat nettled; "but every body knows that the old governor buried a
great deal of his money at the time of the Dutch troubles, when the
English red-coats seized on the province. They say, too, the old
gentleman walks; aye, and in the very Same dress that he wears in the
picture which hangs up in the family house."
"Fudge!" said the half-pay officer.
"Fudge, if you please! - But didn't Corney Van Zandt see him at
midnight, stalking about in the meadow with his wooden leg, and a drawn
sword in his hand, that flashed like fire? And what can he be walking
for, but because people have been troubling the place where he buried
his money in old times?"
Here the landlord was interrupted by several guttural sounds from Ramm
Rapelye, betokening that he was laboring with the unusual production of
an idea. As he was too great a man to be slighted by a prudent
publican, mine host respectfully paused until he should deliver
himself. The corpulent frame of this mighty burgher now gave all the
symptoms of a volcanic mountain on the point of an eruption. First,
there was a certain heaving of the abdomen, not unlike an earthquake;
then was emitted a cloud of tobacco smoke from that crater, his mouth;
then there was a kind of rattle in the throat, as if the idea were
working its way up through a region of phlegm; then there were several
disjointed members of a sentence thrown out, ending in a cough; at
length his voice forced its way in the slow, but absolute tone of a man
who feels the weight of his purse, if not of his ideas; every portion
of his speech being marked by a testy puff of tobacco smoke.
