“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.

“Who talks of old Peter Stuyvesant’s walking?—­puff—­Have people no respect for persons?—­puff—­puff—­Peter Stuyvesant knew better what to do with his money than to bury it—­puff—­I know the Stuyvesant family—­puff—­every one of them—­puff—­not a more respectable family in the province—­puff—­old standers—­puff—­warm householders—­puff—­none of your upstarts—­puff—­puff—­puff.—­Don’t talk to me of Peter Stuyvesant’s walking—­puff—­puff—­puff—­puff.”

Here the redoubtable Ramm contracted his brow, clasped up his mouth, till it wrinkled at each corner, and redoubled his smoking with such vehemence, that the cloudly volumes soon wreathed round his head, as the smoke envelopes the awful summit of Mount Etna.

A general silence followed the sudden rebuke of this very rich man.  The subject, however, was too interesting to be readily abandoned.  The conversation soon broke forth again from the lips of Peechy Prauw Van Hook, the chronicler of the club, one of those narrative old men who seem to grow incontinent of words, as they grow old, until their talk flows from them almost involuntarily.

Peechy, who could at any time tell as many stories in an evening as his hearers could digest in a month, now resumed the conversation, by affirming that, to his knowledge, money had at different times been dug up in various parts of the island.  The lucky persons who had discovered them had always dreamt of them three times beforehand, and what was worthy of remark, these treasures had never been found but by some descendant of the good old Dutch families, which clearly proved that they had been buried by Dutchmen in the olden time.