No Sooner, However, Did The Returning Warmth
Of Spring Loosen The Soil, And The Small Frogs Begin To Pipe In The
Meadows, But Wolfert Resumed His Labors With Renovated Zeal.
Still,
however, the hours of industry were reversed.
Instead of working
cheerily all day, planting and setting out his vegetables, he remained
thoughtfully idle, until the shades of night summoned him to his secret
labors. In this way he continued to dig from night to night, and week
to week, and month to month, but not a stiver did he find. On the
contrary, the more he digged the poorer he grew. The rich soil of his
garden was digged away, and the sand and gravel from beneath were
thrown to the surface, until the whole field presented an aspect of
sandy barrenness.
In the meantime the seasons gradually rolled on. The little frogs that
had piped in the meadows in early spring, croaked as bull-frogs in the
brooks during the summer heats, and then sunk into silence. The peach
tree budded, blossomed, and bore its fruit. The swallows and martins
came, twittered about the roof, built their nests, reared their young,
held their congress along the eaves, and then winged their flight in
search of another spring. The caterpillar spun its winding-sheet,
dangled in it from the great buttonwood tree that shaded the house,
turned into a moth, fluttered with the last sunshine of summer, and
disappeared; and finally the leaves of the buttonwood tree turned
yellow, then brown, then rustled one by one to the ground, and whirling
about in little eddies of wind and dust, whispered that winter was at
hand.
Wolfert gradually awoke from his dream of wealth as the year declined.
He had reared no crop to supply the wants of his household during the
sterility of winter. The season was long and severe, and for the first
time the family was really straightened in its comforts. By degrees a
revulsion of thought took place in Wolfert's mind, common to those
whose golden dreams have been disturbed by pinching realities. The idea
gradually stole upon him that he should come to want. He already
considered himself one of the most unfortunate men in the province,
having lost such an incalculable amount of undiscovered treasure, and
now, when thousands of pounds had eluded his search, to be perplexed
for shillings and pence was cruel in the extreme.
Haggard care gathered about his brow; he went about with a
money-seeking air, his eyes bent downwards into the dust, and carrying
his hands in his pockets, as men are apt to do when they have nothing
else to put into them. He could not even pass the city almshouse
without giving it a rueful glance, as if destined to be his future
abode.
The strangeness of his conduct and of his looks occasioned much
speculation and remark. For a long time he was suspected of being
crazy, and then every body pitied him; at length it began to be
suspected that he was poor, and then every body avoided him.
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